“How do I reach there?” – Nayana Nair

.

I am 90% chaos.
I am also the protector of my chaos.
I am torn between the ideas of
freedom and perseverance.
I am still doubtful how I can save myself
if I hate the thousand parts of me
that have a mind of their own,
if I try to silence the rising waves
to save this one piece of land that I can walk on
and if I wanted more, maybe even reclaim whatever now sits
in the windows of museum submerged and lost in past.
Past is a point far ahead and deep beneath.
How do I reach there?
When will I reach there?-
that is all I think.
How do I save myself from a mind like that?

In my mind, present is just seeing the lacks and absences
materialize into new shapes, into my new arms, into my new stomach,
into the new hole in my heart, into a lungs made of holes.
In another world I am maybe breathing in happiness with each smile,
but not here.
Here I hate myself for forgetting, I hate myself for remembering.
Here I hate myself for speaking too much,
here I hate myself for never speaking out and standing up.
Here I must still protect what I hate-
each living and dead molecule of me.
If only my hate was truly hate
and not just love waiting to happen.
There are easier answers for hate.

I wonder if I learned to look at sky
and learned to yearn for it,
maybe a point far ahead and up above- a future
might exist for me as well.
If only yearning and wanting could be assigned values.
If only looking up and finding a simple sky happened that easily.

“In reaching you” – Nayana Nair

.

If we were to meet somewhere not here.
If we are to be someone new, someone different,
for the chance of meeting
to finally happen.
I think
happiness, even then, won’t be of any consequence to us.

You and me – we – would find warmth
just in the vision of our open arms and tear-stained faces.
We would run into each others arms
and not utter any other useless promise.
We would tell each other without words
that we can be fine by just being together.

Yet, we – you and me – will find ourselves filled
with disappointment and sadness
and a blooming bitterness filled with light.
For the ones who fought and cried and begged
and desperately clinged onto the promise of love-
this love can exist only without them.

In reaching you, in finding your heart on the other side of mine,
it feels that I have just been carrying on the wishes
of someone who loved you a bit more,
a lot more than me, a lot more than this.
The hand we hold as we sleep today,
they have held knives. I know the scent of my end on your being.
I move in closer to you,
trying to remember the me who smiled only for you
and you hold me closer trying to waiting for something similar.

The ones who wanted this love have been long been killed.
the ones we want are ourselves.
“Do you even remember where you have buried me?” I almost said
but instead I said soulless words about some love.
Hoping to find at least this answer without your help.

“Hope and Wait” – Nayana Nair

.

I looked at you for a long time
and for a long time you pretended to sleep.

For a long time
you closed your eyes,
even when tears spilled,
even when laughter almost made out.

I placed my hand in yours and waited.

I hoped even when you pretended to be stone,
pretended to be wax, pretended to be mine,
pretended to want me gone.

I hoped, I waited to held in your arms.

I hope.
I wait.
I pretend to do all this with ease.

I pretend to be a shelter
as I hunger melts my stomach,
as words melt my mouth.
I do not know what you pretend to be.
Not yet.

I wonder
if I let my eyes close,
if I chose my weakness,
if I hide,
will you take my place, place your hands in mine
and pretend to wait?

I won’t mind such lies and such pretense.

*I wonder if our lives could change
if we didn’t feel burdened
by truth and lies all the same.

“i am so fond of you” – Nayana Nair

as you melt your heart into oceans
i fear my arms betray me sometimes,
sometimes they go numb,
they surrender at the thought of your warmth.
when you tell me of your love
as i ache for another,
i want a part of me to ache for you as well.
when you settle for being my comfort rather than my love,
i wish i had loved you instead.
but we are selfish dear
i cannot give up
just as you can’t.
we wait to be seen by the one we can’t seem to reach.
we wait because that’s the only answer we have.
we try to forget the love that we can have but don’t want.
i am fond of you,
so forget me if you can.
i can’t bear to see my pitiful self
in you, i can’t bear to drag you down to my hell
only to leave you alone.

“Normal Love” – Nayana Nair

I love
and wait to be loved
only to feel “Maybe I am not that bad”.
I wonder what that says
about who I am as a person.
In love
I can’t help but put my all,
put up the act of selflessness,
of fierceness.
Be the creature of passion
that I rarely am by myself.
How terribly normal I look
in the arms of my shape-shifting beloved.
How terrible it makes me feel-
this normal love,
that I can never get by being myself.

“replacing your name with bruises” – Nayana Nair

My love for you is nothing special.
We are not the only ones
whose life is turned upside down
by the sheer force of our heart.
But would we have known
what our hearts are capable of
if we didn’t see it for ourselves.
If we didn’t fail, would we have known,
that the ending we took for granted
was not the default setting for this game.
“I am your nothing and you my nothing”
Is it too late to admit this (to lie)?
Walking towards you, into your arms
I want to forget this feeling, can I?

“Outside (Me)”- Nayana Nair

Outside me
there is a wide world,
there are your wide arms ,
a beautiful fate with your voice,
words that you and I made together,
a seat for two, a future for more.

Outside me
exists everything I ever cared for,
ceaselessly asking me to open up
telling me this would be the end of my loneliness
if I do the ‘letting-in’ this time.

Outside me
there supposedly exists a world
that doesn’t hate me as I thought it would.
I know it isn’t me,
it is what I love that keeps you all away.
But what good is laying myself bare
when I can only breathe in the darkness
that you and this world hates so much.

“Dreaming of Love” – Nayana Nair

If we were not here,
if we were not conveniently together,
but lived in places far apart
with only a bleak memory,
our companion,
the proof of our time together.
If we could not hear
each other’s voice everyday
but carry each other’s whispers
in the folds of our skin.
Do you think
we could have known each other better?
Do you think
we could have loved better,
By being far away?

These arms that ache
by holding each other tighly,
in some other time,
in some other place,
may have yearned for a mere touch.
In that world,
I imagine myself
sitting in my backyard.
Looking at the never ending rows
of trees that I cannot name.
And wonder if our separation
will be as long as the life of these trees.
Will these silent friends of mine, these trees,
in this lifetime
know my happiness to have found you at last
as they have known my long wait?
I feel in some other world,
we exist like that,
our love exists like that.
I feel they must be dreaming of love
that we have right now.