“Keep You Here” – Nayana Nair

Even a harmless silence on your part
brings me down to tears.
I act in pathetic way
trying to get you back,
trying to buy your love
sometime using sympathy, sometimes throwing tantrums,
sometimes by changing myself, by changing you,
at times pretending that I am done with you
hoping that you try to stop me,
and in my weakness even thinking of hurting myself
if that is what it takes to keep you with me.
But won’t there be a limit
to the trials and errors that a heart can withstand.
What after that?
How shall I hold you here when that happens?

***

I tell myself everyday
I must work hard to keep you in love with me
till you can see in my tiring eyes how much you mean to me.
But often you look at me
as if you can see what I know I have become-
a human who grows new appendages of greed everyday
becoming a monster knowingly
calling it love.
I play this game by myself
wondering meantime,
why my love has turned out like this.
Why can’t we be simply in love forever
like were were made to believe that we could be?
Tell me how to end this,
this end that I want more that anything (even you)
that end is the only thing that is not in my hands.
I don’t know how to stop all that we have started,
how to fix all that I have disfigured with my desperation.