A student sits in a classroom, drawn to someone three desks away. The speaker sees right away that this person is "different," and the short, separate words "beautiful" and "alive" read like a rush of admiration they can't hold back. But the attraction comes with fear. Being different means standing out, and the speaker "can't / won't" be noticed again. That small shift from "can't" to "won't" suggests the fear is partly a choice, and the word "again" hints at an earlier time when attention hurt, though the poem never says how.
So the speaker pretends not to notice the glances, the touches, the passed notes. The last two lines hold the real tension: hoping the other person will give up, and hoping they won't. The mood is quiet, guarded, and achingly torn, a longing kept locked behind silence. The title, "Deaf Ears, Blind Eyes," names exactly what the speaker is forcing themselves to be.