“The home I had in me for you, wasn’t much of a home” – Nayana Nair

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The home I had in me for you
stood in silence at the
the slow curve of every approaching road,
it stood with hope
facing the ocean of molten cold dead ends.
It was a beautiful place really,
a place where sleep hunted for eyes,
if only for some consolation, if only to feel alive.
A place of hollow abundance, where one could only pray
for a bit of loneliness as relief.
Morning dreams of lace and scissors,
the shade of some long lost sorrow,
the memory of rain always remaining on the clothes,
the sunlight forever imprinted on your chest,
the light of the-world-lost always clawing its way
to the dead center of your heart.
It was the world of bleeding fabric,
lying on skin like a pet waiting for a tamed life.
It wasn’t really much of a home,
there really wasn’t much space there left – for life,
for you, or even my changed love-filled self to survive.

“Getting better and better” – Nayana Nair

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I don’t trust myself with water these days. Of late I have found my arms devoid of the will to struggle. I seem to be getting better and better at abandoning myself.

I now only stand rooted at places where life comes easy. I only linger in spaces where not-breathing is more difficult than breathing. Against my best efforts, all I do is try to live.

The ways to live, the painful familiarity of the world, this stone stuck in my shoe, pressing against my sole, it all used to be unbearable. For long I tried to find a way to live with it. I always failed to find its use.

But now I know how to surround myself in the suffocation of it all, to fill my mind with the smoke of this crude life as I learn to see from scratch again. Hold parts of me captive somewhere, till the rest of me can chip away at my spirit that only sings of blood and end.

Today, in the hot summer afternoon, covered in breaking illusions, I walked away from the lake where my past swims. I unlearn one more pain. I found a road I had never seen, a garden never tended to, a foot of mountain where there was abundance of fruits and all new reasons to live.

“Feeding life” – Nayana Nair

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The crumbles of the day are out of my hand.
They fly towards the birds
who now only know how to sit and wait.

It is morning
and the birds have been dragged
to these grounds of freedom
again.
Again they have been given this abundance of sky,
again they will realize only the abundance of their own fear.

I color their feathers with the dyes of attention.
A friend of mine force feeds them something
that tastes very similar to the sweetness of a tender care.
But they cry and choke and try to wriggle out of his torn hands.
They are much more gentle on me.
My tears never dry,
so they are afraid of me in more softer ways.

I stupidly burn words and meanings into everything we do.
I move my hands on their feathers,
over this soft life that sees me as another bother.
I feel him smile as a kiss of blood blooms on his cheeks
as a beak stills, as they stare back at him.
They wait for him to stop smiling.
They wait for his love
to be withered by their tests of violence.
They wait for a long time.

It is evening.
It is again a moment of miracles
that never quite happen till they actually do.
We wait something to take flight.
We wait for life to find its legs.
We wait for a long time.

“No other reason” – Nayana Nair

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There is an empty blue seat on the bus.
You can always find them – the empty seats,
they swim in abundance in front of your eyes
when you have nowhere to go,
no hurry, no person to reach.
But to find them as you rush in and push past
the people you don’t know
holding the warmest hand in this world
is a miracle I guess.

But today is not the day for a miracle.
At least no old miracles are to arrive.
The buses they rush past
as if they have never known me,
to be fair I don’t remember
the buses like I remember people;
to be fair roads are meant for the rush.
But the cars don’t mean you,
the slow bicycles don’t mean you;
the buses that keep arriving,
the last seat always empty-
to be honest, even they don’t mean you.
You are just dragged as an additional part
as an extension to a feeling that once made me whole.

You are added as an afterthought.
I only look for you in this world
when I have no place to go, no one to blame,
when no other reason comes to my mind
for the reason my heart has grown cold,
for my eyes seeking rain,
when I see people sit back and look out
from the window that once framed us as one.
Without feelings, without missing anything,
I think of you only to fill that space.

“Morph” – Nayana Nair

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That feeling
when something of this world
rushes past you
and you are nothing else for that moment
but the afterimage of what has gone by,
something that definitely was
unlike your own self
that never appears but only haunts.

I don’t know how people cope
with that overwhelming storm
of knowing
the worlds that you can morph into
and all the things
that maybe you always were.

When you become a floating hat and its silent river,
when you become the knob of the radio,
the glass feeling the air before the snow,
the shredded corners of a letter that weeps,
the loudspeaker at the corner of the road
with its abundance of sound and silence,
the sundress peeled away,
the flow of time and fate.

I don’t know what to make of this.
I sit on tables filled with people
who know a thing or two about life
and they talk
as if they have always been their skin,
as if no one can be anything else
but themselves.
So I become the table feeling the soft elbows
pushing down some loneliness with its weight.
I become the napkin held in a fist.

I am now the sky looking down at me
and now the child that I lost long ago.
I am breaking and being taken over
by all the beautiful lonely things.
I feel I was probably made for this.

“What I Remember (10)” – Nayana Nair

I want to write about the boring,
about all that is insignificant,
about the trust that lasts,
about the promises that are kept,
about the things we don’t have to beg from god.

I belive there must be some things in life that goes as we wanted to,
that didn’t take our effort, our prayers to go right,
that fell into place so naturally
that we didn’t even notice the ease they gave us.
The boring that is neglected, that is mocked
must be a dream for a person I don’t know of.
The days of charity and donation,
the realization of the lack that we don’t experience
hits us only briefly,
gives us only short lived sadness or gratitude
and a bit of pride (that has a little longer life)
in ourselves for venturing out of our boredom
to witness the lacking of others,
to distribute a bit of what we have in abundance.

But I am not that changed,
I am not that affected.
Tomorrow when I wake up
I will forget
about the stomachs that are never filled,
about the dry glass and throats,
about the darkness that night brings,
about little curious eyes that will never see a book.
Tomorrow, again I will shamelessly
write about my need for love and acceptance.

But that is how I am
and with time I have learned
not to feel guilty for being like this,
for that is the kind of human I was made to be.
I will only be bothered
by the small bruise on my face,
the small cuts on my hand,
even if I know the existence of greater pain,
for that knowledge is not an anesthetic .
I am a petty creature like that
and I can only really feel my own loss.