“A leaking instrument of love” – Nayana Nair

.

Some part of her
has taken root here.
In this forsaken place,
she flowers and spills
the soft resilient petals of sun
on the dissolving roads,
on the floods of blue.
She lays her soft claim
on the wings of unnamed birds,
on the broken shrines,
on the leaking instrument of word,
on this throat
that knows her name
to be the only god
capable of a love so tender
that she becomes the holy wind
in this sail of a skin,
this skin that heals and breaks
and blooms with blood, only to
become, only to remain
as the last trace of an impossible embrace.

“Walking off the cold” – Nayana Nair

.

The stones are stacked,
a song is sung.
The invisible hands
and wailing throats
are at work again.

The yard grows sand,
grows salt and sun
and water is what it waits for.
Colorless blue is all
that eludes the grand plan.
And the wait for it is a snake –

a snake crawling through
the alleys of heart,
upturning graves and homes,
looking into the eyeless sockets
on walls, waiting for some light
to illuminate something true here.

Wait is the girl who pukes
at the mention of hope,
and walks off the cold
by lighting her own legs.
Her feet that always survive miraculously,
dance on the grassless yards
yearning for blue.

The yard grows feet
grows heart and fun.
The yard is lit with
the light of fried birds –
this is the liveliest moment
that all hands here know.
What else can one do with life?
What else can one do with death?

“Shouldn’t that put me at ease?” – Nayana Nair

.

The skin of the prophets and lovers
hangs with the fresh laundry.
The dices and glasses lie forgotten
in the broken and mutated stomachs of our pet fishes.
A pot of porridge sits on the blue counter.
The potatoes, the rice, the marbled peas grow soil,
grow eyes, grow tongue, grow memories that never were.
The imitations of porcelain crack under the weight of life.
It never used to be like that.

Life used to be small and delicate and beautifully framed
within the carefully drawn floral boundaries of plates,
within the pools of small spoons.
Life is no longer like that.
Now the book of tales burn
along with the missing ladles
and fake money of games no one knows how to play.
Every piece of wood, every piece of our soul,
anything that burns, only burns only what we love.
Only what we love gets to die here.

Shouldn’t that put me at ease?
That something gets to escape this world.
But all that dying,
the small pieces scraped off again and again.
Isn’t that how we got to this-
this place where even pain is dull,
where even the hopelessness doesn’t come with a heartbreak.

“What I want to say, what I want to ask is something else” – Nayana Nair

.

Today I am glowing with your gentleness –
the miracle that I thought was lost for good.
Today all the songs are about
the open sky of your heart,
about the wind that blew through me to you,
through the rooms of your childhood,
through the ghosts in my eyes which you could see too,
through your ruffling shirt made of bluest words
enveloping me, making a new sun for me
with the easy way you leaned in,
with the kiss that reached me,
even in all my hiding places.
So sad no lips were involved, yet so beautiful
that I can remember it without
the memory and weight of flesh.
It pains me somedays, somedays makes me regret
all the things that vanished, all the good things
that almost happened, but didn’t.
But mostly it makes me proud
that I used up all my beautiful dreams on you.
Your smile, that I have never seen
but only felt in words,
was the most beautiful smile of this world.
You were more dear to me
than most of the world that I got to keep.
How sad
that I never got to tell you this.

“The roads that I promised never to walk on” – Nayana Nair

.

There are so many things that I wait to see again
and none of them will do my heart any good.
There are mountains and flags and footsteps
all settled into the sleep, lost in this busy blue.
Some call it drowning. Some call it the end of things.
Some wait for it to rise and become the lonely peak once again.
Some like me float my boat on this ocean
all dressed in sad flashy optimism
with my poor eyesight and a grainy foresight
ready to cry.
Some like me wait for the things they fear,
wait for the things that break, that tear.

All beautiful things of past are now buried
under a common grave with no stone, no epitaph.
I can’t tell apart my love from theirs.
My growing years, my diminishing heart,
the roads that I promised never to walk on,
the hands I promised never to leave-
they call it theirs.
They hold it in their arms
whenever after years of aimless floating
their boat gets caught by a shadow
that wants them.

Meanwhile I am afraid of holding back anything
that tries to stop me. Every pull frightens me
that I might love something that is not mine
that I will never know if this happiness is just
my sickness of water, sickness of search and waiting.
I can never look anyone in the eye
in the fear of seeing someone else’s tears,
in the fear of seeing my own corruptibility reflected.

And yet I can’t seem to end this search
for there are so many things I fear I will never feel again
if I end it all here.
Though they happen to be the same things
that I am incapable of believing in ever again.

“Forgetting” – Nayana Nair

.

Is forgetting something like

descending down the the narrow white steps
and finding myself knee deep
in the coolest spring on the hottest day of year.
An year that I feel I am yet to live,
a temperature that feels a bit too familiar.

Is forgetting something like

looking back at the steps and trying to recall
where I am from, trying to recreate the horrors or happiness
that I am running from,
Wondering if I was actually running.
A part of me begging me to go back,
a part that keeps saying that where I came from
was the only place I ever wanted to belong to.

Is forgetting something like

being brought back to the year,
that I am trying to avoid looking at,
by the receding cold water,
to see my feet run
after the blue shadow, the floating leaves,
the place no summer can reach.

Is forgetting something like

reaching a place
far away from the narrow, broken stairs to past,
but also a place where no springs, no summer exist.
In such a place without symbolisms and signs
I keep finding
another pitiful deity of broken and beautiful hope.

Is forgetting something like

finding faith, loving again, blindly believing.
To close my eyes, to the me that I am now,
just to hear myself running down the stairs,
just to feel the water find my feet again.

“as if nightmares are fiction” – Nayana Nair

.

let’s break those darn mirrors.
lets not peek through the hands of fear.
let’s not see the monsters of sorrow.
remember not
where they walked and where they hide.
close your eyes and wait.

for what?

for the end.

there is an end?

there always is.

there are
ends that pierce through our our shoulder blades
and the blinds of our ribs.
it is actually beautiful to see how
heart melts away too easily, stops too easily
loses it way too easily.

also

there are
ends that make broken mirrors magnificent,
that smell like our mother,
that find our mouths at the dead of the night
and breathe in their last breath into our collapsing lungs.

it is sad to see how
our helplessness asks sacrifice from others
how we go back to sleep,
as if nightmares, once they end, are only fiction.
how we realize only after hours and years, wake up too late to notice
the blue hands, that once seeked us in storms,
decaying under the sunshine of the most beautiful day of our lives.

and what do you do then?

close your eyes and wait.

for what?

for the end

there is an end? even after this?

there always is
but maybe not the one we want.

“Painting Summer” – Nayana Nair

.

As my teacher with broken voice
dictated another question on radius and heights
and the mountains where no snow, no season, no name sticks;
I turned another page and wrote the name of an emperor
who died even though he believed he won’t.
I smiled and tried to correct the very very wrong spelling
of a national political party that my friend wrote. It doesn’t matter she said,
when I couldn’t figure out what was exactly wrong with it.
At lunch, she leaned against the wrong window,
the one with fresh coat of blue paint,
and told me a joke which she memorized
only to remember it wrong.
I again gave her the laugh that meant nothing in particular.
But I knew she loved it when I reacted like this-
as if she is forcing a laughter out of my silent somber heart,
as if she is winning over me all my resistance.
But I was nothing like that.
I was nothing like she thought me to be.
My heart was already open. She was already inside me-
writing melodies with her soft steps beside me,
painting summer sun over every window I looked out of.
But these are things that need no telling,
there are my treasures I won’t allow her to take back,
these are the answer she will never realize.
I hand in another assignment, another answer sheet
that looks too little like me, that raises the eyebrows of people
who realize they couldn’t teach me a thing right.
I walk back to my seat wondering
if my shirt is tainted red with my love
like her back is filled with butterflies of blue.

“Becoming Precious” – Nayana Nair

.

Their torn ends, their disappearing body,
the plastic wings at the corner of
the shallow pockets (that were actually good for nothing)
now look like a teardrop determined to stand till the very end.
Isn’t it all so ridiculous,
laughable, and sad?
The blue that never dies – doesn’t it fill you with anger
at the unfair paces each component of this world moves?
The half alive part of everything cursing the other broken half
for taking them down as well.
Isn’t it a bit too noisy here to miss or accept anything?

(Or am I the only one?)

All the treasures are now at the pawn shops,
and the bottom shelves
of the rooms and houses, countries, and identities abandoned,
in the words that belong to pseudo names and ‘anonymous’,
in the trash cans of people who swear never to love you again.
They lie deleted and dumped under the bridges
whose shadow rubs your back
as you try to vomit out the leftover love eating your heart.

While everything to be thrown away is always there
in the cupboard,
in the handbags, on the sofa, in your phone
talking up extra space,
waiting for you to forget them, get fed up of them,
waiting for you to throw them away,
so that they can haunt you,
so they can be your another true love.
Till they are your sole teardrop when it all ends.

“The Light of White Tulips” – Nayana Nair

.

From the lowest branch
of the falling tree
I looked up
and heard someone laugh.

I have been reborn thousand times after that
but still
as I walk on the charcoal roads
lined with white tulips
that never light up,
as my foot slips
I hear that laugh again.

I hear it
when I cook food
and end up staring a bit too long at the flame,
when the smoke that kills, coats everything
that fills my stomach.

It is stuck in my heart, the violence of the end.
The bluest sky, the sweetest wind,
the flying songs, and my muffled cries-
crystallized as one.
One tiny map, that tells no directions,
forever stuck in the corner of my eye.

It plays like a record, plays hide and seek.
It is a play that ends
with the stories breaking into me.