“Our knowing of faith” – Nayana Nair

.

“What do you know of prayers?” she asked,
as she held my hands together within her own.
I asked her “Don’t you know anything about me?”
and there appeared another crack on her hands,
there bloomed another rose in her hair
there was another smile – the “looking down” smile,
“you don’t know any better” smile,
“you will soon thank me” smile,
“I know you hate my smile” smile.
I tried to imitate it, to drape it on my own face.
Cause even if it didn’t seem like that, I loved her smile.

I stared at her smile
wanting to save it somewhere in me. I stared
at her small beautiful parts
wanting to un-see the person she is in this moment.
I am always trying
to forget how suffocated these moments with her are.
I am always trying to forget
that with her words of love there was always a plea,
a suggestion, a manipulation – to make me something like her.

Would it make me seem pathetic, petty, or romantic?
if i called her a poison. Though everyone here is a poison,
even me, but she is a poison for me, the only poison
that works on me. The only one I didn’t want a death from.
She tells me about another deity I will never believe in.
She tells me a bit more about saving, about faith, about her own self
that can never be broken, how even breaking can’t end her now.
I wished she was right, I wished there would be never an end to her.

I wished for all kinds of ends for myself,
even the ones without her. But in no version
did I invent an agreeable version of her that will better for me.
She has to be herself. Whatever that might mean for me.
I wonder if there would come a day like that, a day when
she would love me like that. Do I even want a day like that?
Can I even tolerate a change in her?
Wouldn’t that break me more than anything?

I get up and say something about “better things to do”
and she says something about “the dangers to the faithless”
and I can only smile for now
at this weird, beautiful, messed up part of our life
at our of differences, knowing of love,
at our knowing of faith in different things that save us in their own ways.

“I think I am” – Nayana Nair

.

The person I think I am,

this person with dreams and purpose,
this person with heartful of love
and tears as a proof of its painful blooming,
this person with a lot say and a lot to see
with an agreeable “to-do”
and hidden “what-if-I-never” list,
this person good enough to be included in your plans,
in your friendly banter, in your group chats,
in your betrayals, in your short-lived love,
in your museums of wax, in your corrupting memory,
in your unreliable heart

this person
– this image,
is merely an excuse I give to world,
an excuse I give to myself.
So that I can continue to exist
even when I don’t know why I must.

“Agreeable” – Nayana Nair

Once I didn’t feel less
for wanting less.
But now my ambitions
are the measure of my capabilities.

Now as I try to get/buy/copy a new agreeable dream,
I am instructed to be ‘unapologetically me’,
apologising only to myself
every time I smile in a life
that I didn’t want
and can never love.