At 5:45 a.m., before the day has properly begun, the speaker of "hiding it" is already losing an argument with their own mind. The poem follows one ordinary school morning (alarm, breakfast, walk, bus, class) from inside a head that will not stop asking questions. Its central idea is that suppression does not calm anxiety. It only drives it underground. Every time worry swells, the speaker gives the same answer, "PUSH IT DOWN!", and by the end that habit has left them unable to say what they feel at all.
The poem runs on a repeating pattern, like a machine stuck in a loop. First comes a long, breathless block of worries. Then the capitalised command. Then a flat, quiet order, "Stop thinking", followed by a few clipped instructions such as "Get on the bus, find a seat." Two voices alternate: one that spirals, and one that bosses it around. The bossy voice never comforts. It sounds more like a drill sergeant and soon turns insulting: "Don't be stupid, pull yourself together." Even "Keep telling yourself your fine" gives the game away, because "fine" is something rehearsed, not believed.
There is no rhyme and no regular metre, and the free verse follows the panic. The anxious lines are stitched together with commas, and questions pile up before any can be answered. The punctuation itself seems to tumble over: "Did we set the alarm, why hasn't it gone off?, will it go off soon?,what if it doesn't?" The question mark and comma collide, as if the next worry barges in before the last one has finished. The short commands do the opposite and cut thought off mid-flow. Time distorts too: "what seems like hours" turns out to be "only ten minutes."
The word "but" is the poem's hinge. "I'm not hungry, but I should be, I need something, but I don't want anything, but dad will get mad if I don't." Each clause cancels the one before it, so the speaker can never settle on a want or a feeling. The mention of dad hints at pressure from outside the head as well, though the poem says no more than that.
The worries also escalate. The checklist of "books, bag, lunch, water bottle ..... lanyard!" is familiar and almost funny. Then a sudden noise sends the mind lurching to "will it hurt me?, am in danger?!" The explanation is deflating: it was only rubbish. That gap between the harmless cause and the terrified reaction shows a mind permanently on guard. On the bus the fear turns inward: "I'm going to cry but I don't want to cry, I don't want to be seen, but no one will notice but what if they do?" Here the title makes sense. The speaker is trying not only to stop the feeling but to conceal it from everyone around them. By the final block the feeling has found its way out through the body anyway: "My head is spinning, my hands are shaking, I feel sick."
The line that matters most is "Why don't I know how I feel?", which appears twice. It is a bigger question than anything about alarms or bags, and the poem seems to connect it to the refrain. Someone who keeps pushing feelings down may lose the ability to name them. The speaker even says "I should know how I feel but I don't", which adds shame about not knowing on top of the original fear.
The ending is quiet. After the capitals, "Stop thinking" stands alone with blank lines around it and no exclamation mark. It reads as exhaustion, not victory, and nothing has been resolved. The loop has simply closed until the next trigger.
The poem is significant because it makes audible something that is usually invisible. On a crowded bus, nobody can see this inner storm, and that is exactly what the speaker is counting on. The poem offers no cure or neat moral, only an honest account. Its informal spelling and uneven punctuation keep it close to unedited thought, which suits a poem about the pressure to look fine while falling apart. For a reader who has felt something similar, it may bring recognition. For one who hasn't, it explains why "just calm down" is such useless advice.