“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 only way to be complete” – Nayana Nair

I sit on the cold boulder
and film everything, just like I am told.
I am told, only for today,
I should stop sewing myself up haphazardly,
messing up the live-stream,
and talking about things that will never happen.
I have been told to put a hold
on the wonderful manipulation that does no good
to any effort my mind puts
in fixing things back.

My mind doesn’t like me much, understandably.
And I don’t like the idea of fixing anything- a harder concept.
Maybe that’s why I burn as my mind looks around me.
Maybe I should actually stop, when I am told to
but I don’t want a way out, I don’t want to look.

“i promise not to hurt anyone but me”
“i am fine like this. don’t take my tears seriously.”
“please don’t mind the doctor’s note.”
“please don’t mind the smoke in this room,
it is a temporary solution to my emptiness,
till something worse comes along.”

There is an exit sign that flies far away from me.
There appears a road
that it eats itself up .
There are bridges that I have cried over
and the fires that no longer burn.
Everything of beauty that I had in me
I have lost it here.
I have burnt my body, nerve by nerve,
for the sake of peace and love.
Let me live here
near the ashes of my past selves
near the life that cannot be,
around things that can’t be helped.

“Threadbare belief” – Nayana Nair

Have we crossed the bridge yet?
The one you promised
is just a heartbreak away.
The one which would crumble
once I cross it.

I imagine the threadbare braided ropes
ready to untie and become one with my past.
I imagine having to do nothing with
how I have lived so far.
It is such a relief to think it is possible.

But the more I walk through your silent forest
the more my suspicions grow-
that there was never a way out of this from the beginning,
that there is no running away.

“Watching the Sea” – Nayana Nair

On the bridge that you cross every morning,
once sat your heart watching the sea,
looking for her face.
And now when you have finally found her face,
you miss the sea that you lost.

“Flower” – Nayana Nair

I pluck one leaf at a time
from this flower, this script
my life is.
I throw them from bridges
on cold evenings.
I bury them in the soil
that soils their print with time.
I burn them to ashes,
so they won’t smell the same.
I hang them on trees
that will never bear fruits.
To leave this story of mine
everywhere and nowhere.
So that you may find it.
So that you may not find it.
But
I wear the last page, last leaf
with only one word, you name, written,
on my finger
as substitute for you hands
that I can no longer hold.

“With Time” – Nayana Nair

I learnt with time
that I could write everything I had in me
and still it would not matter.
No clever lines, no rhymes I think up
can affect the life around me,
where people are indifferent
to what I do , what I say
and especially what I write.
And no matter what I do,
this distance I have from this world,
cannot be bridged my mere words.
And if it can’t be done through words,
I am convinced, it can’t be done at all.

I learnt with time
that everyone is lonely.
But only few are cursed
to remember this fact
every time they wake up
to a morning that
they never look forward to.

“WHERE COLORS MERGE”- Nayana Nair

 

 

As a child, they were, a wonder,

The brown stone bridge and the blue flowing under,

The green withering away on reaching the path,

The fiery red flames spitting everywhere its wrath,

The yellow sun, or orange maybe,

The pink that clouded the hands of babies,

The black cold night and the white snowflakes,

When colors had life, that was ours to take.

And today on the bridge I stand,

With withered white dissolving the pink of my hand.

Where went the colors? the wonder?

Now red is just love or danger.

The yellow just a hideous bright color,

The blue is for rain: for eyes or weather,

The green has, now, no space to grow,

Other colors, with time, come and go.

The people too are colored now

In their cheerful oranges,

Or gloomy blue nights.

In the black ashen hearts,

Or in the red gore fights.

In the yellow sunny smiles,

Or the lifeless aged white.

In the carefree green lives,

And colorful soaring kites.

But you my friend,

You my love,

Are very hard to define.

I look hard,

And guess I might,

But I’ll never get it right.

For you are where my judgment fails,

With your color having neither meaning nor shade.

As I stand at this rationality’s edge,

I see

You are, where all my colors merge.