The Rise of the Band Geeks, Episode 2: The Last Band Geek on Earth

Amidst the spongy grass and gray pebbles dotted with flecks of quartz

Along paved trails that sluice through the leaf-frosted earth

Beside the brick structures segmented by imposing windows

Stands the last band geek on earth.

She stretches a bruised arm up into the sky

Bats at the wisps of cotton-like fog

Her hand fades into the silver and becomes the clouds

But her feet never leave the ground.

Tucked away behind the band hall and the slabs of pavement erupting from the dirt

Strewn across the coarse, fractured pavement and triangles of glass

Her wrecked

Resolve skitters along the slate aggregate and collides with dislodged rock.

And who is she,

Stretched betwixt the heavens and purgatory, lost in her own dust and her swirls of mist,

The engraving of her failure pressed into her flesh with nature’s stylus,

To dissolve in the muffled fall dawn and let her hair assail the wind?

Who is she,

Alone on the cement steps of the band hall with her uniform of sweatpants,

A phantom that is and yet never was

Destined for nebulae and neutron stars?

Who was she to believe

That when the band ascended into the constellations for their weekend away from Earth,

She’d journey with them?