There was an assembly about it.
We were all told to be kind to him, not
to ask him any questions.
It would bring back unpleasant 'visuals',
the Headmaster said.

Vis-u-als.

We were tantalised.
We nudged each other, cooing and
tittering, each of us thinking,
I bet he'll tell me.

At breaktime, we crowded around him, mouths agape,
like fish to the surface of water when
they're thrown bait.
Reluctantly he fed us the details
that had been denied us on the telly,
telling us how the blood

had diffused through the water and turned it pink,
how bright it was,
how like paint.
They seemed two different things,
the red and the pink, unconnected,
and they had no meaning either.

Oh, this was a news story;
this was a real find. We listened,
rapturously, wanting more gore, more screams,
the crowd's huge gasp, the rushing forward.
I could just imagine. The voyeurism of it.
We wanted more of the colour red.

And we wanted, more than anything,
to have been there ourselves.
Our invulnerability scared us, and he had
been there, had seen it for real, had seen the
shift of time into light, had seen
what none of us could decipher.
We were jealous of him because we lacked
that revelation.
We wished we could say,
I've seen someone die.