“Surface” – Nayana Nair

.

I want to write of things I don’t know of.
About the feelings I never had,
the bodies that never surfaced
in the rivers that exist only on the grounds
of treasure-less maps,
the feelings I spoke of but never ever actually felt
as if it happened to me.
My love was like everyone else’s,
so much that I was acutely aware of their borrowed nature.
I want to write of things I don’t know of,
about a love that is truly mine, a feeling that is not plagiarized.
When you casually say “you don’t know anything of love”
I don’t want to feel guilty, like I always do.

“Home of Blindness” – Nayana Nair

.

I have to sing
and keep singing,
have to keep begging people to dance within my heart,
within the confines of these bricks,
with the parts of me that can’t die
and parts of me that I wish I still was.
I have to keep inventing reasons and occasions
I have to paint every meaning within me
in the boldest loudest colors.

Because the moment it all stops
I will hear the shouts again.
There is no silence in this world.
Outside, everyday
the fearful children of a fearless god
shout his name again and again.
Asking for reason, for rain,
for roses carrying their name.

I also once stood there, in the dark corridors,
on burning roads
asking god to love only me,
to hold my hand, to save me alone.
It is a very dark road,
the one we take to find
the light that will only belong to us.

And there is only this home of blindness
far away from all the crying and ceaseless hoping
where I can use these eyes of mine
for something more than holding and spilling tears,
where I get to sing for the god within the song.
I worship these walls that hold me in my place.
I worship all of your laughs, all the steps the never stop.

But I am still afraid
because tears still come easy to me,
because even this borrowed light whispers the name of one
who I still hope to reach.
The one who should exist somewhere outside these walls.
But I can only be here in this world of his
if I don’t run to him all the time.
I can be his, without falling short or falling apart,
only if I substitute what he has made for what he is.

“They go through my closet trying to find me and maybe themselves” – Nayana Nair

.

He stepped down from his ‘cloud nine of the day’
as I stepped out from my house made of last drops of rain
and at the intersection of fleeting memories
we fell in love.
That is what I tell my friends
when they ask me about the moment
I was tempted to end the sadness of my life.

I tell them about the words I borrowed from his lips,
his borrowed tongue that helped me eat a bit more.
How I taped his adjectives on my mirror
so that I wouldn’t have to look at myself.

They sit with me on the table
I can’t bear to share with my love.
They stare at me, as I ask them what to wear,
how to hide my poison, how to hide the crack at the elbow,
the bruised collarbone, the split lip,
the ache in my heels, my frayed wings,
my broken voice
and all other reminders of what love has done to me,
and what more love can do, if i just let it in again.

They tell me it is all healed.
They tell me it is all past.
They hold their skin against mine to make me see
that the cracks are all in my mind,
how everyone looks just like me,
how everything wrong with me is now the norm.
And they laughed
when I looked at them with concern.

They dropped me at the restaurant
and vanished at the farthest bend of the road.
As I dragged my feet towards another story
that I will never get to complete,
another tragedy that suited only me,
I looked back and tried to think of all the things
that these kind friends of mine suffered
as they hoped and wished and lied to themselves.
The exceptions they now considered normal,
the wounds they cannot even see,
the pain they cannot call pain,
the love they cannot bear to leave-
I tasted these facts
in every spoon of artificial sweetness
I fed to my mouth that evening.

“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.

“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.

“One More” – Nayana Nair

I return to my unaffected neighborhood.
The success of my efforts to keep them ignorant
vexes me,
their narrow vision,
their inability to see me as I do,
their belief in me, the love they handout to me,
the children that look up at me-
making me feel smaller.

~
I have no option but to run
and once I start running there is no end to it,
there is nowhere I can stop.
Cause everything good in this world
reminds me of the unwanted anomaly I am.
Every dark emotion in face of others
becomes a part of mine.

~
Every day I barter with universe to keep me living,
borrowing time for this body,
one more light for myself.
One more body, one more happiness
(one more me) put to death
once I reach the dead end
that waits for me at the close of each day.

“Vacant Sky” – Nayana Nair

There was a melancholy in
looking up at the endless vacant sky
and looking for the invisible presence
of someone to depend on.
To wear these ideas
that were guaranteed
to sort my life and mind.
Except it felt like clothes borrowed.
I had to either return them
or throw them away.

“Memorizing Names” – Nayana Nair

There was no joy to wander,
to pack my bags
with belongings not entirely mine
and to have a bagful of borrowed stuff,
of borrowed time.
Living on the kindness
that I didn’t deserve.
Each new handhake
sounded like
echoes of heartbreak
from the future.
I knew where I was going
and I knew where I was taking them.
And that made me hate this ordeal
of trying to memorize the names
of all these new people
who will be soon forgotten.
My heart was never broken.
My home was never broken.
At least not the type of broken
that can’t be repaired.
I do not have shelter of such excuses.
I chose to stay,
I chose to love
and I chose to move away.
I choose to live with the list of names
to the end
than to see them walk away.