"Otherwise" by Cilla McQueen is a two-stanza poem that hauntingly presents the agony of being in a long-distance relationship in which irreconcilable differences of opinion augment the actual physical distance between the two. The title, "Otherwise," echoed in line 5, indicates a contrast between what is reality and what is hoped for. McQueen internally divides her poem to reflect this contrast, and uses natural imagery versus artificial imagery to symbolize an essential difference between these once lovers. The conversational, informal diction heightens the sense of intimacy and the free verse structure allows McQueen to use line endings to emphasize the imagery, which so clearly illuminates the divide between two people. .
The division of stanzas physically represents what could be, "otherwise" in this relationship. In the first stanza, McQueen depicts the way things are. Stanza one defines the speaker as the "other." She is the "opposite." Her stars assemble in "unfamiliar" patterns. She is first compared to her lover, the one being spoken to, by what she does "not" do, which is watch "traffic or television." From this I can infer her sense that he is trying to define her. Things are not equal. There is criticism in her stars being "unfamiliar." Why are his stars not the unfamiliar ones? She is apparently in a different hemisphere from her lover, but in a land that borders the same Pacific ocean. Below the equator, water going down a drain spirals opposite to draining water above the equator, and apparently a waning moon in the North would be a waxing moon in the South. The Southern Cross is a constellation that does not appear in the North. McQueen characterizes her country using natural imagery, his with artificial things like "traffic and television" and perhaps the "chains" which lie between them. Instead of being preoccupied with traffic and television, the woman watches the "huge tide," symbolic of change and upheaval and part of the ocean that divides them.