You stand beside the fire” – Nayana Nair

In the rubble with nerves hiding sparks,
in the nest of sleeping explosives,
again it is you.
Again you are here to prove something
by doing something unasked for.

You build a place for warm tea,
for all our shivering ghosts to haunt.
You place the chairs that are not chairs
but buckets that cannot hold anything now.
There are chairs that are lying around just fine
but you don’t want them.
You don’t want the old purposes eating away
the beauty of all that is left behind.

You console the ones holding onto what is no longer there
but you don’t want the ones who want a way back to what it was.
You ask us questions with your bleeding lips
you want us to answer with something real,
not just words.
“You are cruel”,
you laugh when we say that.
You make us leave everything we are
just so that we can finally sit on empty buckets
thinking about the hands we cannot hold,
thinking about hands that are no longer hands.

“The city is no longer burning”, you tell us
as we place our empty glasses in front of our empty eyes
and tell us it is fine if we don’t believe it now.
“Sleep. Dream and stay for a while with the molten and bombed,
the lost and the dead that still have your heart.
Take your time.”

As we lay awake in our heart-wrenching grief,
as we lose ourselves to your favorite world of sleep,
you stand beside the fire
that keeps us alive.
You stand beside the fire
that is not actually fire
but your heart
that burns like sun.

We wanted to tell you, “You are kind.
You are too beautiful for this world.
Have our heart and burn it instead.”
But we couldn’t .
We knew these things were easy only in words,
that these were things we couldn’t do, yet.
That we have not smiled and laughed with bleeding lips,
helping while being hated.
That we were too selfish to be you.

“Fictional Friends” – Nayana Nair

i break another glass today,
the girl with blue highlights in her hair
walks over it without bleeding
but tells me
not to try such things at home on my own,
that it took her years of invisibility
to even try such tricks.
but she has no suggestions for what else i should do
instead of breaking my smooth skin
and wrecking my good name.
so she tells me a story about a girl and wolf,
another about a girl and her impossible dream,
about a girl and her sad prince,
a girl and the dark world,
a girl and whatever wants to break her down.
she tells me i don’t have to be that girl.
that i just have to be person who happens to be a girl
and not hate herself for it.

---

it is night already.
i find myself in strange blue rooms.
i hold hands with another new stranger
who promises to sing me to sleep.
he walks like heartache that knows how to smile.
he pretends to be the real deal.
he is too drunk on his own sad story like me
to even see anyone else.
so no we are not in love.
i just want to borrow his songs,
his voice, his awareness of all that is wrong.
i look out of his window, at my own home
at my friends, at my love, at broken frame of my family,
at myself who is trying too hard
to be indifferent to it all.

---

the battery of my phone dies
and i am alone again in this life
that i can’t find my way around.
i am somewhat lost, tired,
and yet somehow happy
to have lived through this despair,
through another dark night.

“Carve a Chaos” – Nayana Nair

Let’s move closer
into each other’s pores,
move into each others mind,
where we are bound to lose our way.
Let’s blame each other
when we miss the chaos of our own mind.

Don’t ask me how to return to normal.
Normal never existed for us.
Our life together has no place for normalcy.
How to put a knife on an already bleeding wound,
and smile when the pain seeps into and cries out my heart-
I learnt that from you.
Like I learnt to confuse anger and possessiveness with passion.
Like I learnt to bear your frequent silence
and occasional disappearance.

Let’s move closer
into each other’s absence,
carve a space for our needs in each other’s heart.
It is not love, I know.
But dear, we both are not good enough
for this thing called love anyway.

“Golden Sand” – Nayana Nair

I was convinced that if I wrote a bit more
my skin will turn into the golden sand
that lines the beach that I write of,
that I can finally dig into myself
without bleeding,
without anyone’s help,
without anyone’s love,
and find something of value in myself.

–

But when I reached that shore and I saw that sky
I forgot to dig, to look for myself.
I sat there and thought
‘I am lucky to see this beautiful sky’.
In hindsight,
I think it was fortunate (and surprising)
that I didn’t ruin that moment, that feeling
just for the sake of finding myself.

“What we won’t find” – Nayana Nair

I have spent every bit of my energy
trying not to cry, not to lose,
trying to believe that this suffering is fine,
that I’ll somehow make it through.
I struggle
to forget all the compromises
that have only given me new scars that no one can see but me,
to come in terms with the fact
that it is not my lacking that keeps me away from what I want
but the fact that I am not welcome where I am going,
I am not the one people want to see.

My heart, your love and happiness are both gone.
You cannot recognize them even if they return,
for my eyes have lost their light by seeing too much of this world.
We can be nothing more human version of disposable cups
to the ones who look through us, who live to hate us.
We will bleed till we die waiting for kindness that we won’t find,
for we are not made of stone even if every mirror shows us that we are.

Tomorrow, lets admit that we are not good enough,
lets just pack up bags and walk till we
find an easier dream or an easier death.

“Too Much Love” – Nayana Nair

Lets go down together-
in the darkness that you dread so much,
towards the love that you want so much.
Let me hold the falling you,
let me become the warmth
that you never knew.
I have a bleeding heart
that knows too much of love
and doesn’t know when to give up.
The smile of yours
that has kept me alive till now,
I want to give it back to you.
I will find a way
to get you back on the path
that your feet deserve,
even if it leads you away from me.

“Another Song for You” – Nayana Nair

I will make you yet another song
that you will unfailingly forget,
but these are not for you to remember me anyway.
Only dip your tired bleeding feet
into these gentle waters of my heart.
Soak in the words that you deserve to hear.
And then you can again go on that path,
that calls you day and night.
I hope my words, my songs
never become the prison
that your heart dreads so much.
I will make you yet another song
to keep you company on the roads
that you want to walk alone.
To hold you hand
in the your weak human moments
that you don’t want anyone to witness.