the boy who ruled science

Everyone remembered the scream.
Red hot pain on cold white walls.
That was the end of Toby.
He was fourteen, wore orange Garfield glasses.
The girls called him cabbage head

But he came back bigger,
A juicy yellow crown on his hand.
The accident was all we would chatter about
How hot was sulphur? How hot?

444 degrees. Woosh, There it shone. Gold.
His mangled hand raised like a beacon
Of suffering, guiding the class.
It was divinity. In the playground

We told stories of the sound as the liquid hit his skin
Like Alien’s acid, burning through steel.
Then his scream, primal from a nerd’s mouth.
He then ran it in ice water, tempering his fist.

What temperature does sulphur boil at?
The temperature of hell. He would pace
The science corridor, ogled at by first years.
Their goblin faces shining up at the boy
Who ruled science.