“Black Pond” – Nayana Nair

As I climb,
my steps remembered the shoes I once had
the ones that didn’t hurt so much
and how hands of mine that hacked through them
just to become my own person,
some sort of grown-up.
I climbed over the yellow soft dress
and the light that it caught
just to get this, this body that looks held together
but is not
(this body knows only how to fall apart),
just to get few more shadows that ruin my beautiful wrist
with their persistent passion.
They claw through me, to see how I am made,
how I look and speak once I break.
A stranger once left me at the bottom of a black pond
and called it love just so that I won’t cry
and in return I called him my love
just for few breaths, just for my life.
I climbed over the right to mean the word “love” thereafter
and the dream of knowing a heart other than mine.
I breathe as if I have sinned
yet I walk like I am happiness and determination in flesh.
I cling to all the bitter bits of this world
as if they would ultimately save me.
I climb over, get over, and forget
so easily, so bitterly
that each feeling of mine is just a shade
of resentment.

“in this castle of forever” – Nayana Nair

i held on,
only because i feared
i might regret giving up on someone
whom i could have probably loved again with time.

i held on even when
this scenario of finding love in you again
didn’t give me any happiness.

love only taught me fear.
fear of hurting you.
fear of being hurt.

in this castle of forever
i haunted the one who haunted me back.
we have hidden our bodies, our heart
somewhere no one can find.

we wait for the other
to give up or grow up.
we wait for someone else
to pull us apart.

“Change Me” – Nayana Nair

the doors, the light falling on us,
the grass that grew by the roads that we walked,
the flowers in our backyard,
everything.
you changed everything.
you filled everything with so much light
and drew every object around you
with such intense colors
that I had to love you.

but you could not change me.

my heart stirred in its sleep
but never wanted to wake up and decide.
i am not dragging you down for what happened.
i am not saying that you were enough.

i am saying that it was your benevolence-

how you never tried to take this fabric of my skin
and sew it something that would fit you,

how you remained the wide blue sky
and how i remained a small disappearing brook,

how my heart felt small to even hold an essence of you,
how i feared to lose you,

how i wanted to lose you for once,
to be free from this fear

that is what drove us apart.

some days i wished for you to fall into me,
to make me something more than i am.
some days i wished i never met you,
never became aware with how small i am.

“Chase” – Nayana Nair

I came here knowing that you would be here as well,
knowing that you won’t like to see me here
or anywhere.
But I have been always good at not seeing the truth.
So as I put on the dress I wore when I first met you
I told myself – if you hate me, resent me for showing up,
it is because you have not forgotten me yet;
if you avoid me it is because you know you would love me again.

The distance has dulled all the pain that I felt with you
and I prepare myself
to dive again into the turmoil, the feelings
that result from seeking you out again.

But as I enter this room
this crowd that knows our history
can’t decide whether to get us closer or to keep us apart.
No one says your name around me, even though you are in front of me
and I wonder, how long it has been since you have heard my name as well.

I have taken a step
and now
I have to wait for you to take the next.
Would it have been easier for me
if you could just utter the word ‘end’,
instead of avoiding me like this.
As the hour I have allowed myself to be shameless ends,
as I wonder how will I ever make my way out of this world of yours,
I feel the air beside me shift
I feel the old me waking up in myself again.
But it is not you.
You have already left.
I realize the end I could never imagined
exists,
that a ‘you’ without me exists.
That I must find a new way to exist now.

“Looks Better on You” – Nayana Nair

You have left your reflection in my mirrors
and now I have no choice but to dispose them.
I do not want to see you
tainted by anything that is mine.

You may not know this
(and may you never know)
but I love you
because you are nothing like me,
I love you
because you cannot understand me.
You remind of what I could be
if life gave me better circumstances
or if I knew how to choose better.

On you this shine of happiness,
that life stole from me,
on you
they look better.
If that is how the world works,
if happiness is a fixed constant
I’ll gladly let you have my share.

Though you are always holding my world together,
I do not mind everything falling apart
if in all the breaking
you are the only one kept intact.

“Come Apart” – Nayana Nair

We believed (or wanted to)
that this world where we won’t be staying for long
will be always there,
will the stay the same
even when we leave.
That our eyes have captured something eternal.
But even the stars that we believed in
were in fact dying,
so far away that we didn’t even know.
Would it have mattered even if we knew?
Would we have cared for an end that we won’t live to see?
So even when I see that we are breaking,
even when I know it will come apart,
I know we don’t need a forever,
just bit more time.
We just need to vanish into dust
before we watch our love die.

“Far from Truth” – Nayana Nair

For someone who speaks so much
I mean so little of what I say.
I let myself be swayed too easily
and too often.
I foolishly take my passing feelings and poor judgments
as some eternal truth,
when they are not.

Today, I may talk of my wait
for this sorrow to leave my life.
Tomorrow, I will claim it as my only friend
from whom I do not wish to be apart.
All those contradicting words
are true and heartfelt
but only for that moment of time.
Tomorrow I may as well wake up and say that
my sorrow is you- my beating heart.
And I won’t be too far from the truth.

“Postpone” – Nayana Nair

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There are so many things
that I can’t be bothered with,
all the things I must do eventually.
I hope it is same for you.
Because all the time I have created,
all the cares I have swept under the rug
all that-
I plan to waste with you.
I hope you are not too caught up in life.
I hope you wake up today and tell me
what a waste of day it would be
if we spend it apart.
Lets push away every work
for a tomorrow that falls on a lonelier day.

“What I do best” – Nayana Nair

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There is a fierce calmness
that holds me together
even when I think
that I will fall apart.
Seems like falling apart
is not that easy
for those who lived in pieces
that they never knew they had.
So I will turn deaf
to the words of love
that presumes that it knows me.
So I will kill time
with preaching words of self-love
that I struggle with everyday.
I will fill myself with the stars above
And I will learn to live
and learn to die.
And wait with dread
for the day I’ll feel complete.
I don’t want to be complete.
I know how to be broken.
Being broken is what I do best.