Two Different Mornings

When I lived in Mexico
my stomach was upset one morning,
so I went to the lecheria (the milk store)
and got some yogurt.
About 10 minutes after I ate it
I puked all over the floor of my bathroom.
I lived with 3 young Mexican men
and my best friend from Texas.
In Mexico they don't flush toilet paper down the drain,
instead, depositing it into the trash can
after each wipe.
Normally, the trash can is emptied daily,
but in a house full of 20 year old men,
we were not as punctual with this task.
So there was this mountain of shit-stained toilet paper
in the bathroom and when I threw up
my vomit splattered all over it,
saturating the already soiled toilet paper
into a soggy pile of stomach acids and curdled yogurt
on the blue tile floor.
The window was open and I could hear
the sounds of the street and the city outside.
Metal was clanging on metal somewhere
and the air felt like springtime in Texas.
Birds flew off in the distance.
With a headache and a dizzy head,
sweat pouring from my wrists and armpits,
I labored in the bathroom for close to an hour
with a mop, some rags, and a broom until the mess was clean.
We've all been there before,
well most of us have, as a parent, a lover, or friend.

Some years later, in my thirties,
my stomach was upset one morning.
I decided to eat some yogurt to reconcile the problem
and it actually worked.
This is how I came to write this poem.

Copyright © 2012 by E.B. Buckett.