“Outside (Me)”- Nayana Nair

Outside me
there is a wide world,
there are your wide arms ,
a beautiful fate with your voice,
words that you and I made together,
a seat for two, a future for more.

Outside me
exists everything I ever cared for,
ceaselessly asking me to open up
telling me this would be the end of my loneliness
if I do the ‘letting-in’ this time.

Outside me
there supposedly exists a world
that doesn’t hate me as I thought it would.
I know it isn’t me,
it is what I love that keeps you all away.
But what good is laying myself bare
when I can only breathe in the darkness
that you and this world hates so much.