“where our days end” – Nayana Nair

She makes circles on the back of my hand.
She writes “love” again and again on my skin
so that I don’t forget her.
She writes “love” again and again with her fingers
so that she may not forget I am still not lost to her.
That I can be different as long as she sees me for me
and she lets me see an unaltered part of her once in a while.
Few more alphabets follow
of my name and hers
and all the names we wish we could forget
just the way we are forgetting to love
even when that is the only thing we want to remember.
I tap my fingers on the steering wheel
to a song that plays only in the past,
wondering why I learned these words that only give me pain,
give her pain, give us only half of each other
while we are missing more pieces than we were made of,
why my losses are more than my being,
why we have to stop here, by this cliff, every evening
waiting for our ghosts to take a step back,
to look back at us
and see the happy ending waiting for them,
why we are invisible to our ghosts
who only speak of names and futures that we have grown to hate?

“Eavesdrop” – Nayana Nair

From my empty room,
from the edge of my personal cliff,
I looked into the windows of strangers,
looked over their shoulder at texts they write,
looked at the pages where their bookmark rests,
silently waited at the edge of my chair
trying to overhear responses to the big questions.

And all I have known by prying so hard
is that there is nothing there.
Nothing in the text that could pass for shorthand.
The same book rests on the same table for years,
serving only the role of a carefully thought out accessory.
No question is big enough to be carefully considered.
No relationship is important enough to be held to heart.
That I was foolish to believe otherwise till now.
That I am putting myself on another path to heartbreak
if I do not believe in the night that I see.
I must unlearn the way I have lived
to find a place to belong.

In between the cold beginning and cruel ends
that are the parentheses of our lives,
there is nothing for me to hang on to.
But it helps to know
that there are plenty of empty rooms in this painful smaller eternity,
that I need not kill myself over an emptiness so common.
And it is really difficult to feel alone once I know that.

“The Little Blood I Have” – Nayana Nair

I looked up at the confused giants
and puzzled at their ugly voices
and deformed faces,
how they hold onto stones and branches
how they hold onto papers,
and threw each other off cliffs.
But what made me sadder was
that no one who was thrown off those cliffs ever died.
They just keep coming back
looking a bit different, speaking more funnier
and acting more mean
and throwing each others down again.
No one ever died here.
Everyone lived and everyone wanted all this to end
but no one wished it more than me.
I was made to believe that the little blood I have in me
is their doing, is their gift.
I wonder how much time it would take
to empty myself from the traces of this violence
and memories of people I grew up calling my family.