Outhouse

On Day Two I met Lolette.
On Day Two I met my cousin.
I never learned his name.

Lolette's house on cinder blocks is
where my blind cousin lived,
his pupils an unfocused sea of green,
naked under these tin eaves that Lolette
had purchased with money squirrelled
from a stint maiding in Saudi.

For six pesos the local cola was his;
(seven for a Coke or Pepsi).
My cousin drank one. Then two.
Soon his body writhed. "Fire ants?"
I said. "No. Toilet." Lolette smiled.
The bathroom, made of spare lumber,
had been placed in the cow pen,
with breezes sweeping the
smell away.

I stood to open the gate,
Lolette grabbed my arm and held it.
"No," she said, scuffing playing cards
across a rutted table.
"If you do it, he will not learn"
she said, as he ambled toward the wire.

Careful fingertips first found the fence.
His arms and legs and every thing
crouched,
then paused,
then felt the air,
perhaps sensing the presence
of barbs, the eyes of cows,
the sun, and us as brown
skin shimmied into unclaimed
space, angling one leg
into air that by now held
dire expectation, then another,
moving his torso in slow-mo,
soft skin clearing thorns by the
width of an eyelash.