Calming Thoughts

Dead butterflies falling from the sky.

Rain drops that taste like her skin.

The candy of her breasts.

The encompassment of her internal softness.

The cling of her lips.

The evanescence of her hips.

The sting of her minute flesh, enwrapped in her pliable folds.

The wet of her tongue, her sweat, her pearlescence.

- Astral Carmine

Hurting Demons

To my father I was "shit" and "fuck face", but my sister LaShay was his sweetheart, his little angel, etc. She was a smart, sweet, beautiful girl who was going to be a nurse when she grew up. I was a nappy-headed bitch who was going to end up on some street corner sucking dick, "the only way your ugly ass will be able to get a fuck," he said.

When I was ten I tried to kill myself. Moma was at Bible study and the little angel was at a Girl Scout meeting. I went in the bathroom and got his medicine from the cabinet, and washed each pill down with tap water from the sink. I knew he would realize he loved me once I was dead, but then it would be too late. Thirty minutes passed, and then I was on the toilet with blood spewing out of my rump and skeeting out of my "clitoris," Brandon told me it was (This is when I found out that thing has three holes in it, and all of them are for peeing). I kept having to switch around because I was throwing up, too, spewing blood out of both ends. I woke up in the hospital feeling like somebody had skinned the inside of my belly with their finger nails and teeth. Moma was there. She was crying. She wanted to know why I did it. I told her I was sick and just wanted to make myself feel better.

"Stupid motherfucker!" he screamed at me later on when nobody was around. "What you go off and do that stupid shit for! That's more money I got to take out of my pocket!"

I never tried to kill myself again, but there were times when I wanted to. When we got caught in traffic on the downtown bridge sometimes, I could feel a part of me tearing away from my body and running from the car. And I could feel that part of me jumping and falling and splashing and drowning and dying.

One night I got out of bed, put on my clothes, and walked to that bridge. It had rained earlier, and the wind was shivering and wet. Brandon leaned forward against the railing on the right side of the road. His hair looked and moved like it was made of ghost. I knew he was thinking about jumping, too.

Brandon thought we should hold hands and drop into the water together. I loved the idea of Brandon and I dying together like that, it was such a romantic idea. But he changed his mind and said he wasn't ready to die because we hadn't even done it for real yet. He knew I only wanted to kill myself so I wouldn't have to go with my sister to Mr. Garrison's tomorrow (That's what my daddy had me call him when we were at his house).

"If I was better at faking sick," I said, "I wouldn't have to go over there all the time. And my moma is gone keep making me go because she thinks I'm just jealous of his new wife and kids and I aaam!"

When I started crying, Brandon put his arms around me so that the palms of his hands were on my back and kissed my forehead. "I'll go with you tomorrow, My'yana," he said. "Even though we know that won't work. He'll hurt you anyway, I know. But at least I'll be there. To touch you. To make you feel better."

The moon was round and bright. Brandon let go of me and lifted his face to the sky and screamed at the moon.

"That demon that just came," he seethed, "was another Hurting Demon. He kept putting stuff in my head. He wanted me to cut off little girls' things and put them in jars."

I had once used the magic of my brain to make an image of a Hurting Demon("The things inside of me are much worse than demons," Brandon would sometimes say to me. "But I don’t know what else to call them.") . It had goggling eyes like a planet alien, and its flesh was dead and swollen. And Brandon told me I was right. And then he told me that all of the demons have mouths that look like a woman’s vagina when they open up, and that some of the demons’ have tongues that look like penises.

"The ones who have penis tongues can make them move like snakes," Brandon had said to me. "And

sometimes they skeet nasty stuff out their tongues. Stuff that makes me feel bad all over."

"Is it gone now?" I asked. I was trying not to show that I was scared.

"Yes," Brandon said. "I screamed it out."

"Maybe we should go to K-Mart and get us some nachos,"

I said. "That'll make us feel better."

I started swinging my arms as we walked. Brandon caught the one closest to him.

"I love you much better than Shay," he said. "I love you better than any girl. When we grow up, I'm going to make love to you endlessly."

At times I let Brandon touch and press my "sweet little brown thing". Sometimes I let him use his tongue, but only when the demons were "fucking each other" inside his body, and the stuff was all over the inside of his mouth.

"Brandon, have you been cutting yourself again tonight?"

I asked.

"How did you know that?"

"I just asked."

"I cut my stomach again," he said. "I know I told you I wouldn't do it no more, but the Hurting Demon wanted me

to . . . cut my moma's thing off, too. He wanted me to cut it off in her sleep. I didn't, though. I cut myself instead." Brandon let go of my hand and pulled his shirt up. A blotch of red had come through the bandages he had taped over the wound.

"It's not that deep," he said, trying to console me. He smiled. Brandon was beautiful in a way that was impossible. "I wrote a poem about it," he said. " 'Carmine Scar, number four. But still I am the Demons' Whore. They only stop for a little while. They have no mercy on this child'."

Two years earlier, some Hurting Demons had left Brandon's body on the wings of butterflies. We were ten, and Brandon had gone hunting for butterflies and lightning bugs by himself.

"Why didn't you want me to go?" I asked. "What's wrong, Brandon?"

"Nothing, I'm just hurting right now," he said, angrily. "Now will you shut up and leave me alone."

"I hate you when you're like this," I told him.

Brandon pushed his hands into my chest. I grabbed his hair as I fell. He punched me in my lip, and I let go of his hair and put my hand over my mouth. And then Brandon moved my hand and stared at my lip as blood began to leave it, and as tears began to leave his eyes.

"I didn't mean to, Briana," he said.

I punched him in the middle of his forehead, and he went flying back, his yellowish hair spraying around like funny-colored water.

"I didn't mean to, Briana," Brandon sobbed. "I love you. I caught them butterflies for youuuuu."

We lay there on the gruond for a while, staring up at clouds that I thought looked like butterflies.

"Don't they look like butterflies to you?" Brandon asked me.

"Where you put them butterflies, Brandon?"

"I wondered if I swallowed them whole," Brandon said, "would I be able to feel them moving around on the inside of me? I wondered how it feels to have real butterflies in your stomach."

"I know you didn't eat them, Brandon!"

"They're at your house. In your room. In that jar. I put it on your bed."

"How many you catch?" I asked.

"Three," he said. "I didn't catch no lightning bugs, yet."

"I want more butterflies," I said.

"Then I'll have to hurry up before it gets dark," Brandon said as he was standing up. "Before they go back in their flowers."

"They don't live in flowers," I told him. "They eat the sugary stuff on the inside. The nectar."

"If I catch you more butterflies," Brandon said, his voice falling like a gentle rain, "will you let me touch you down there again?"

"Yes," I told him, shyly.

"They were around my head, Briana," Brandon said as he stared down at me. "They were around my head, flying. It was like a dream. I was laughing, I was so happy. And I don't know why, but I went inside my head and breathed the butterflies into my mouth. And the Evil Things inside of me were so pleased to see them that they wanted to ride on their wings. They made their bodies small. But only a few were able to get out."

I just stared back at Brandon. He was magic.

"One day, I will tell you my secret, Briana," Brandon said as he took my hand.

I stood up, and we began to run in a circle with our hands together. After we had fallen, we laid on our backs and called out the shapes in the sky until night.

"If the butterflies don't live in flowers," Brandon said, "where do they live? Where are they going now?"