"Average" is the most deceptive word in this poem's title, and the poem knows it. Over sixteen short lines, the speaker lays out a school day that looks perfectly ordinary from outside: get dressed, get good grades, be kind, go home. The poem's real subject is the gap between that surface and what happens once the school bell rings. It is about self-harm, but also about hiding it, and about the exhausting work of being the person everyone else relies on while no one notices you.
The first half is built almost entirely from commands. "Wake up, get dressed / Grab stuff, leave house." There is no "I" in these lines, and the missing subject matters. The speaker sounds like a machine running through a checklist, or someone who has stopped feeling like the author of their own day. The same flatness applies to the emotional labour that follows: "Smile and make them all happy / Listen to there problems / Give them advice." The speaker is the one others lean on, yet nobody in the poem listens back. Even "Do what ever it takes" is unsettlingly open-ended. In context it means pleasing others, but it also hints at how little the speaker is holding back for themselves. The misspelled "there" reads as a small slip that keeps the voice raw and unpolished, as if the poem was written quickly, without anyone checking it.
The turn comes with "School ends, go hide," and the poem's most unsettling choice follows. "Grab my knife" repeats the verb from "Grab stuff" earlier, so the knife is listed in the same breath and the same tone as a school bag. That is the poem's quiet horror: self-harm has become part of the routine. "Add one more scar" is also phrased like accumulation, almost like earning another grade. Good grades and scars are both things the speaker collects, and both are shown to others or hidden from them.
Then the grammar shifts. "Watch it bleed, watch it spill / Watch all your worries fade / You feel something again." The speaker moves from "my" to "your" and "you," as though stepping outside themselves, or speaking to someone who might understand. The repeated "watch" slows the rhythm and gives these lines a hypnotic, detached quality, as if the speaker is observing someone else's body. The poem is honest that the act brings relief, and the phrase "feel something again" suggests numbness underneath everything. The poem does not turn this into a solution, though. The very next line is "Get up, hide the scars," and the cycle resets.
The form reinforces that trap. There is no rhyme and no regular meter, just clipped, breathless lines, most of them only a few beats long. The poem is a single block with no stanza breaks, so the speaker never gets a pause, and almost nothing is punctuated at line ends until the final full stop, which closes the poem like a door. Key words return in a loop: "smile" appears at the start of the day and again in "Smile and wave," and "hide" appears twice, first as a place to go and then as a task. The line "It's the same everyday" says outright what the repetition has already shown.
The last line repeats the title, but one word changes its force: "My average middle school life." Now "my" lands heavily, and "average" sounds bitter, as if the speaker has quietly accepted that this is simply what life is.
The poem is significant because of how plainly it shows invisibility. It has no dramatic imagery and no elaborate metaphors, only a calm list of verbs, and that calm is what disturbs the reader. It reminds us that the student who is always helpful, always smiling and always doing well may be the one who most needs someone to ask a second question. If a poem like this feels familiar to you, the most important step is the one the speaker never takes: telling a trusted adult, such as a parent, teacher or school counsellor, so the hiding doesn't have to continue.