I Think It Was Bobby Poem by Seamus O' Brian

I think it was Bobby,
or maybe it was Mike;
(time seems to wander
off with more and more
of my memories) -
no, it was Bobby who puked
in Mrs. Sarvis' shoe
outside the principal's office
while we were lined up
like X and Y chromosomes
just before mitosis.

Actually, he puked on her
leg, and it crawled downward
into her shoe, and while
our lines mutated in the chaos
such an act instigates,
Mrs. Sarvis calmly removed her shoe
and set it aside with the placid
grace of an altar boy.

Then came Mr. Simmons,
stalwart man of maintenance
sowing heaps of sawdust minced
with minty Pepto-Bismol, designed
to smother the odor
of gastric extrusions
and sear eternally into my mind
the fragrance of the elementary years.

In high school I discovered
on the loading docks
behind the band room,
where the band was not practicing,
but inhaling
the sweet aroma of henna.

In medical school I encountered
a spectrum of odors wholly untethered
to prior experience or imagination.
But interlaced with them all, ubiquitous,
perhaps, the iron tinge, the metallic, rusty
scent of blood.Stale blood; rushing, nascent,
hemorrhaging blood; fountaining blood,
seeping blood; black as tar, bright as crimson
sunsets blood.

It became my craft; it became my badge.

But they say in Columbine it was the scent
of blood that met them at the door.
Not surgeons, or paramedics, or soldiers.
But children.The blood of children,
becoming the incensed curtain between
laughing and dying.

In Sandy Hook, too, I imagine that obsidian
edged stench of childhood life dissipating,
puddling under desks, seeping into the
weave of overly familiar carpeting.

Virginia Tech, Parkland, Santa Fe,
the ferrous tinge of blood and powder
rolls on.

But where is Mrs. Sarvis?And
where is Mr. Simmons?Where are
my mom and dad, or the
principal or the police or the
authorities who could always
fix everything?

We stand around and scratch our heads
as the incense burns on;
the hemorrhage continues.

Sometimes, though, to stop the bleeding
you reach for a clamp.