“the open doors don’t mean much now” – Nayana Nair

.

the towers
are open to the public now.
the crowd can now crow
and row and climb
to the better views-
a softer light,
a smaller distant world,
the illusions of gods
growing on our own earthly skin.
this radiance
was supposed to mean something else,
something more, something new though.
but these deafening footsteps,
this meaningless chatter,
these houses now growing like shrooms,
the clothes now drying on every step,
the resurgence of life and the blooming bruise,
the grass growing, the herds living
and dying in the shade of the tower-
they only make me cry.
even in their most wretched moments
they still remain things i can’t have.
the singular monument of hope
and its playground of chaos
and me, the only child
who doesn’t belong,
looks up at the promised sky,
feeling a new hollowness creeping.
feeling myself break
for the same old things in new ways.