“All the boxes are checked” – Nayana Nair

It hurts a bit more naturally
and less violently,
now that betrayal has a range,
has not one but many faces.
Now I need not figure what I did wrong.

All the boxes are checked:

family, family, friends, not friends,
thank-god-we-were-never-friends friends,
i-am-sad-i-stood-up-for-you friends,
people who marked my skin with their name
to own me
while i slept in their arms
(another golden cup added to collection of people hard to get,
people who won’t die if thrown away or left alone)
loves whom i am tied to,
the ones who demand smile and sometimes a bit more,
always a bit more.

They know the feel of my hand and love how it heals.
They hold my hand in their sleep
in their nightmares, in the storms of passion
that they need a person to aim at.
They break my wrist
in my nighmares, in my awareness of my fruitless love.
When I am at verge of crying,
they tell me to not give them a hard time
and to act like the refuge that I am supposed to be.

So I tell them “I love you”
and this lie hurts a little less everyday
as my heart becomes the stone pedestal
all my loves stand on.

“Estranged” – Nayana Nair

when you slipped into my arms
and tried to tell me stories
in your broken language,
when you got all your numbers wrong,
when you touched my face
with your tiny hands,
i almost forgot
that you are not mine.

i shouldn’t have.

“Send You Away” – Nayana Nair

I bask in the sunlight
of borrowed memory.
I grieve in the arms
of your dying words.
I find another piece of myself
to send you away with
and I wonder why I feel empty
even though you have given me your all.

“Just Us” – Nayana Nair

The sounds long dead and are born again
as the crack appears in time
and you walk into these arms
swallowing the sun,
swallowing the world,
leaving just us,
just me
looking at your memory passing me by.

“As you try to save me” – Nayana Nair

I have always looked at you with wonder and worry,
as you held me in your arms from falling.
Did you ever know
that I fell anyway?
The relief of having you close
vanishes in that fall,
replaced with only awareness
of this body that I live in
and this mind where I die.

Let us not talk of the emptiness
and incapabilities that we are decorated with.
Your will to endure, my wish to change
does nothing but add a little more pain.

But everytime I decide to leave,
I look at you once more.
How much of my life have I spent looking at you
under the excuse of ‘last time’?
It pains me that you knew of my love
when it was the last thing I wanted you to know.

“Throw Myself”- Nayana Nair

There was no breath left to let out

as I throw myself down the stairs.

And every step that I tumble down,

I feel breaking bones.

Muscles and knuckles

losing another bubble of a happy memory

that I once thought would be enough to keep me alive.

My broken thoughts rush into my blood

into my empty lungs,

almost convinced that this the last

they will see of me.

And I never tire out.

I never feel sore enough or pained enough

to stop myself from doing this to me.

But while I took you for another wall

that existed to break me,

another voice to help me fill up

pages of essays of self-hatred

and regrets that do not forget me.

You became the arms that hold me, lift me

And carry my burden of life along with me.

And for first time

I want to live better.

And I want you in that better life with me.

“Finally…the warmth” – Nayana Nair

When I saw myself
in the light of kindness,
that I only used for looking at other.
I finally felt the warmth
of being wrapped in my own arms.
That day
I let myself sew the sun
back in my eyes.
I let myself hang the portraits
of my failures and weakness
on the walls my life.
For that one day,
I was more loved than I ever will be.
For that one day
I was more strong than I ever was.

“Leave my heart behind” – Nayana Nair

I would welcome you into these
arms to cry out your grief,
however small.
If only I could leave my bitter heart behind
that only wants to be consoled
and never wants to care for anyone else.
That only looks at the world
to look for a face
who would take the blame for what it suffered.