The title arrives with no punctuation, in one breathless blurt: "I'm normal I swear." The words sound like something said too many times to people who didn't believe them. An oath like "I swear" is only needed when you expect to be doubted, so the title hints, as an inference, that someone has already questioned the speaker. The subtitle, «Opposite Minds», sounds cooler and more clinical, like a label on a file. Between them, the two titles set up the poem's two voices: the hurt, defensive one and the one trying to explain itself calmly.
The poem is about the decision to reveal yourself and what happens when the attempt fails. It opens in a kind of waiting room: "Here I am / I have been here for awhile." The speaker has been hovering at a threshold, weighing "a glimpse of me / Or build a wall." The two choices are stark, and neither is comfortable. The speaker then draws the divide between "you" and "me" in two short phrases: "You see logic and numbers / I see colors and life." Numbers can be counted, while colors and life can't be, and only the speaker is given "life." The speaker says "we think too differently" rather than "you think wrongly," but that quiet imbalance of warmth against dryness still carries a sting.
The wall is the poem's one sustained image, and it changes as the poem goes on. In the first stanza it is a single wall the speaker might build. By the third it has become "my walls," already standing, and the speaker's effort is modest: "I loosen my defenses / Make small holes." There is no tearing down here, only pinpricks to let light through. The word "glimpse" appears twice, and both times it is a small one. The speaker is cautious even while taking a risk, which makes the next stanza hurt more. The verbs shift from the speaker's careful "loosen" and "make" to the other person's "push" and "pretend." Being pushed out is physical and blunt. "Pretend to listen" is arguably worse, because it looks like kindness and isn't. It is also the longest stanza, five lines where the others have four, as though the hurt overflows its container.
Listen to the word "Maybe," which appears three times. First it doubts the effort: "Was it worth it? Maybe not." Then it doubts the other person: "Maybe you never will." Finally it turns inward: "Maybe I shouldn't have tried." The blame travels from the situation to the listener and lands on the speaker. That is the saddest move in the poem, because the person who took the risk ends up regretting it.
The form is plain. This is free verse with no rhyme and short, conversational lines, so the poem sounds like someone thinking aloud and not performing. Punctuation is thin. Only one question mark appears, after "Was it worth it?" The final question, "How can we pull through / If we can't even learn to understand," has none, so it hangs open like the title. The pronouns also form a shape: "we" in the second stanza, "I" and "you" in the middle, and "we" again at the end. The last stanza loops back to the second, from "think too differently" to "too different," and from "unable to understand each other" to "learn to understand." The speaker has circled the problem without escaping it. The word "even" is telling, because it suggests understanding is the lowest possible bar.
The poem's significance lies in its honesty about a common experience, being misread after finally trying to be known. It never says who "you" is, which lets the reader fill the gap with a friend, a family member or a classmate. The poem is also a small irony in itself. Its speaker's last doubt is whether trying was a mistake, yet the poem is another hole in the wall, another glimpse offered to a stranger. The "you" never gets a line, so we are left holding the one thing the speaker's listener failed to do, which is to listen properly.