A new kind of language
There is a space inside my daughter
where new words grow.
She wants to visit the Perriment
insisting it’s a place we’ve been before.
We scroll through photos on my phone,
the farm with the fat, pink piglets
the play park with the soft sand and the monkey bars
each time she shakes her head.
Sometimes she’s a foreign land, wild and unmapped
and I’m ready to give up but then
there is a photo of us
standing on a wooden tower
overlooking a labyrinth
there, she says, there, the Perriment!
I should tell her it’s a maze
but I like her word better and we’ll keep it
this word that didn’t exist before her, a word
for a place only the two of us inhabit.
Sam Payne is a writer living in Devon. She holds a BA in English Literature and an MA in Creative Writing. Sam writes flash fiction and poetry and her work has appeared in a number of places online and in print. She tweets at @skpaynewriting
An enchanting poem and a celebration of children’s language. Thought provoking too about the relationship between namer and named.
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Absolutely delightful. Thank you!
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