"institutional" poems - Hello Poetry

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.

0

Oct 30, 2013

Oct 30, 2013 at 2:16 PM UTC

Rage

I Don't Average Out

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.