“At the end of this list” – Nayana Nair

.

I tried being cool about it.
I tried not to call it a heartbreak.
I tried forgiving.
I tried thinking ‘my life is not over’.
I even invented some feelings that can be talked about.
I entertained the stupid idea – “it’s all for the best”.
I fed it all I owned,
and soon I didn’t have much left to keep that play going.
I think there are still hundred things more
that I have not yet tried.
Maybe one of them would work.

Or maybe till I reach the end of this list,
I would probably forget
who I was or who you were,
and maybe you would just melt into my identity –
claiming 2% of my faults, causing 25% of my breakdowns,
the major reason for my suspiciousness,
the only reason I can’t seem to be myself.
Just like how I pick up all odd habits and mannerism
from people I don’t even recall,
will you end up
becoming things that I do without reason,
becoming my convenient excuse for turning my back
on anything that can become
more important that me in my own life.

“Any time now” – Nayana Nair

.

“Irrespective of what has happened, I know happiness.
I do not remember the sadness as vividly
as those sentimental singers do. I don’t know the pain
that lasts eternities. I know of a happiness that cannot be lost.”
This is what I say when I meet my past.
This is what I say when I step into the world
where the past doesn’t pass by like it should.

I say this
because I cannot say
I am afraid of
because once___________________________
and till now it haunts me.

When___________________________________,
I have to strain myself, I have to forget myself.
Before someone tells me “This is life. Get used to this.”,
before they tell me about “the worst that can happen”,
I have to get out of my body,
I have to hide my remaining self in the corners I won’t fit.

I have to force myself not to throw up
as ___________________________________
_______________________________________,
as I see from far away
my body smile at all that is wrong.

I smile on my walk to the main road, I smile on my ride back home.
I hum a little joyful song as I close the door,
the same damn song I have hidden behind all this time.
On my warm bed, I lie facing myself
waiting for the tears
that should have arrived by now.
I wait for the breaking to happen,
so that I can put myself back,
so that I can suck out this poison again.

But the tears, the breaking, the moment of honesty,
the crying without knowing why
doesn’t happen.
And I realize, I fear that now ______________
has become a part of me, a natural pain.
Now
there is no way I can claim the body of the one
I cannot recognize.

I look at ceiling and hold onto the tremor of this stranger’s heart
that should have been me.
In those restless heartbeats, there is hope, there is fear,
there is anger, there is a me that has to say meaningless words
like “a happiness that cannot be lost” to soothe this world,
so that it won’t take away anything more of me.

“To the one who who couldn’t change me” – Nayana Nair

The answers I hear
are never the words you speak.

The answers I hear answers are
poorly dubbed clips of proven cruelties and truth
that only a stranger to my pain could utter,
that only you could utter.

It is the thoughtlessness
with which you try to pronounce hope with ease in front of me,
even when you know the names of all the dead ends and dead smiles
where hope has always led me to.

It is the thoughtlessness with which you try to replace
the glowing shards of sad words from my crown
that I have fallen in love with-
my eternal friends who are as unwanted as me.

My crown and its sharpness are just walls for you
and my claims of love for who I am is just an act.

My dark feelings take up more space
than me or you combined
and yet you like to call me small.

Your light
only gives me new shadows to play with
and yet you call me weak.

The color of my eyes and song in my heart
don’t change for your liking
and my love for you doesn’t change.
Yet you call my passions temporary.

While my answers are the ones
that you cannot accept or even see.

My answers exist in a place where I exist
not in a place where you or me would like to be.

I hold onto your hands as much as I try to let go
-that is my answer
Those are the words that you cannot speak.

“You’re right” – Nayana Nair

last night

*i do not like saying last night
because once i only used to speak of it as ‘yesterday night’
until someone told me that it’s wrong, even if it means the same

so last night
i thought how it is something you’d say
“it means the same, but you are wrong”

sample conversation
(based on reality, read too much into lines,
sounds more neutral that it was, maybe not much of reality then)

my heart feels so empty
can’t you love me bit more
while i try to fix myself
i promise you
one day you won’t have to try
but i need you today
i need you to try a bit for me
can you wait a bit for me

you will remain empty till you hold onto yourself only
contrary to your belief
you cannot fill yourself with you
you can only be full of yourself
which might be the case that you fall under
thought i am not professionally trained
to point out the wrong
in people’s heart
but there is so much wrong with you
that i can’t swallow the judgement i have passed on you
i cannot help you grow up
i have a life, i have a dream
i have a need for someone
who can be there for me
without asking such things from me…

and so went our conversation
and obviously you were right
you were right to such an extent
that i would be just making a fool of myself
if i tried to negate the facts

so being the emotional being that i am
i hated you
for being correct, for being so cruel,
for speaking coldly about me,
for letting me know more about-
self-indulgence, self-pity,
victim mentality, and emotional manipulation.
and if i cried now, you’d be proving your point.
if i complained, you’d be writing it down as a case study
to support your claims.

and because of my stupid unrealistic love
and my distorted sense of reality
i sat there in front of you
saying “i am sorry”.

you are right
i need to get rid of what i am
to get anywhere in life,
to get over you.

“Things you don’t care to know” – Nayana Nair

You who took so much space in me
you who created stories in me,
put up grand shows of light and shadows in me
you who spent your nights naming every star,
trying to claim my sky-
at the end,
you were too easy to forget.

Or maybe sitting in this world
where everything is yours,
I find it hard to realize your lacking.
Maybe my heart is no longer here with me
to even want you back.

“Tiptoe” – Nayana Nair

the ones we sign our valentine cards to,
the ones we tie ourselves to for life
wait for us to die (or some form of death) to become free.
their heart is full of love – only not for us.

they tiptoe at night to bury their crimes
and demand honesty only when it suits
what they have in their mind.

so even when we ask,
“why did you break me like this
when I loved you so?”

they say, “there are no proofs in stories like these,
where everyone claims to be wronged.
there are no daggers, only words,
which are conveniently easy to forget
or edit if enough years pass.
anyway no one remembers that well,
one can always hear things wrong.”

so we go back to sleep,
get fine with living blind.
tell our self it is fine
as long as we are together,
when “together” is not what we want.

“A Dull Reflection of Hope” – Nayana Nair

In a dull handheld mirror
that had yet to be broken,
I looked at myself
and realized
that someone is dying inside me.

I didn’t know how to accept this,
so I solved every question in my math textbook.
I learned to eat more and sleep late.
Stared at my wrist for hours.
Pretended to sleep fearing questions.
Tried a bit of every sin
and waited around to be damned.

I felt a constant urge to break someone
so this world could be little less happier.
But death claimed my heart
before I could do that.
So now I write “love” on your tongue
without knowing what it means.

“Glossy Paper” – Nayana Nair

I had too many magazines of glossy paper
with pictures of places better than where I live.
I always bought the one showing better lives.
(what can I possible do or dream with knowing the worse ones)
I would like to say that I remember each beach I saw,
that I remember the colors I never knew sand could take,
that I remember knowing exactly how my footsteps would look like
for they were already there on that foreign land
waiting for me to claim the prints that no one else could take.
But I do not remember all that.
I remember thinking all that, but not what I saw.
Now any picture that I scroll by in seconds
could replace the place that I wanted to see.
That’s probably why I do not bother
with spending my time on images of cheaper paradise
that I now know I cannot walk into just because they exist.

I am a firm believer of words now.
There is a place I read of
and I create it in my mind
particle by particle.
Every place I read is my creation,
that cannot exist without me.
I have all kinds of better world in my mind
and they feel nothing like the ones
I have stopped dreaming about.

“Yet we stay like this” – Nayana Nair

The dust once again comes to life
under your sunlight.
My voice wavers again
not knowing what to say.
Not knowing how to move
in this air once agains feels like
the tomorrows we have lost.
The brokeness of our souls
looks for things to claim.
They dream to become the cracks
in this the wall that we have built for each other’s sake.
And yet we stay like this
not moving, not deciding,
not claiming each other’s affections.
As if we have eternities
to look at each other,
as if we have learned
to love in silence.

“Better without us” – Nayana Nair

The dust that lay on the page
that I left open long ago
is now a page on it’s own,
with a story its own.
I look at it and read
negligence and loneliness.
I read how things are forgotten
so easily
and how things are treated as things
by people who
live their life accumulating things
and rest half of it
misplacing, destroying,
replacing and forgetting them.
How people are treated on similar lines
but worse.
How we come back to claim our possessions
when they can clearly exist better
without us.