What it is this about? Well there's loneliness and isolation, wistful longing for another person... but I think mostly this is about the awkwardness of adolescence and growing up. Boy wants girl. Boy doesn't understand girls. Boy speculates wildly...
...obviously it works the same for any other combination of genders, and the gender of the protagonist is in fact wholly in the gift of the reader... is in fact a sort of 'everyperson'; a symbol for any or everyone.
One day, maybe, she'll speak to us and everything will change.
What is her mission here on Earth...
...and do I even waste what chance I have
lounging beside my locker, checking-out
the girl from Mars? Nobody ever saw
her father's car: so maybe she gets dropped
at five a.m. by shuttle-pod somewhere far
beyond the football ground. She has no clique,
not even in the default group for freaks
and friendless geeks--I know; I've run with them
myself. How can you stand outside outsiders?
Unless intelligence, so alien
broods silent in one eye? It sees but does
not do; it won't join in; her hands so thin:
she writes machine-like, awkward and a touch
frustrated, as if paper with only two
dimensions is so quaint. She ain't stupid
in maths, she writes the answer first, before
the working out. And think of Martian sex!
Does she have tentacles...? Scratch that. Relax...
Focus on facts. She's drifted through these halls
for three years now, with always half a smile,
an emissary from mission control;
or maybe robot telepresence rig,
that sort of thing: space-probe or bomb-disposal
mechanism driven by a soul, distant,
the far end of a string that's pulled so tight
out of an empty tin. I'll ask again:
What is our mission here on Earth?
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