I Don't Average Out
I remember crying during lunch my senior year —
my math teacher's eyebrows colliding,
one plane folding into a fractal.
He had sat there, nearly four years,
watching me struggle through an unreal number of numbers —
literally and figuratively —
while again and again the test scores whispered:
You
are less
than average.
But behind the eyes of a determined man
my insecurities never won.
He refused to believe the numbers.
He was searching for some unspoken meaning —
and so was I.
I almost found it the day of graduation.
I almost found it between his eyebrows,
creased like a point of pride —
because I was the first of my family
to hold something as light as a diploma
instead of a heavy head,
nodding under the weight of ******
The first to feel like a feather
instead of a six-pack,
a bad back,
the slow grind of manual labor.
I was flying.
Then college tried to land me.
Again I let an institution measure me.
Test scores trying to tell me what I was worth —
intelligence reduced to something
too narrow to understand its own diversity.
Less than average, they said.
But I wasn't below the line —
I was just outside it.
An individual
above their point of comparison.
I could read a room like a text.
I could build connection out of nothing.
I could debate, move, make people feel something.
Gold doesn't average out either.
So I learned —
it wasn't the diploma I should have chased.
Not the thing I'd wave at my little brothers and sisters
to show them how to live better,
burn brighter,
burn longer.
Here I am.
Red-faced and unafraid.
Spoken word was always there —
hiding between the creases of my teacher's brow,
folded into the question I didn't know I was asking.
The answer was never in his book.
It was in his look.
In his refusal to quit on me.
I could have found it sooner
if I'd known what I was searching for.
I
am
not
stupid.
I haven't failed by choosing something
the institution doesn't recognize.
I am not defined by a score,
a line,
a rule,
a rhyme.
I don't average out —
and that is not a weakness.
Power isn't in a piece of paper.
Power is in your words.
In your chosen behavior.
In the silence you finally break.
The answer was never in his textbook —
it was in his persistence.
In the way he looked at me
like the numbers were wrong.
He just didn't have the words to say it.
But I do.