What my mum doesn’t know is
I have my own planet.
You can’t see it from the earth:
it’s the other side of the sun,
and everything there is opposite:
they go to bed in the morning,
and they get up at night,
the children teach the grown-ups
and tell them off at home,
the best food there is crisps
and broccoli is bad – very bad.
In Otherside language,
‘You poo!’ means ‘I love you!’,
showing your bottom
is waving politely
and if you blow a raspberry,
right in your mum’s face, or your dad’s,
and accidentally spit on them,
well then, you’re really kissing them,
but in the Otherside way.
Joanne Limburg
(Previously published in Joanne's children's collection, Bookside Down, Salt Publishing. Photo by Ian McGowan on Unsplash.)
Joanne will be contributing a new piece to Others, an anthology celebrating how writers and writing can help us to see the world from other points of view. Read more from our contributors (including the rest of the Twelve Days of Others sequence) here. Please pledge your support now, and help us to raise funds against hatred.