“I can bear truth only when it is a figment of my imagination” – Nayana Nair

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Had I climbed up that mountain
I would have probably seen farther than anyone else.
There would have been roads
that clearly go somewhere.
There would have been an eroding edge
to this globe of loud wrecking dreams.
There would have been a faint hint
of a beautiful eye crying behind a rising cloud.
I would have looked down and searched
and in not finding myself
I would have been happy for a while.
But in a moment that is spelled
with the same frustrated relief
as finding my glasses at the most obvious place,
a peace in me would also have come to an end.
There is the roof where I wrote my life in chalk,
relying on the rain which never came.
There would be a shadow of trees, a group of animals
who refuse to call themselves by a collective noun
and they would have looked happier (probably).
There would have been a monument of marble,
the last pride and plague of ego,
taken down by the masses who moved like landslides.
I would have definitely looked for you.
After all it is what I have done most of my life.
And I would have seen you building yourself again
with your broken tools and shining blueprints.
I won’t know if you were sad or happy
and you won’t know that it mattered to me.
It would have been such a perfect distance to look at you.
A perfect distance to exist with relation to world.
But I won’t climb up there.
Just as I know so much of all that I have never seen,
I also know there is not a particle of me
that has a taste for truth.

“We are not made for any season” – Nayana Nair

The cold that we depended on
to hide our hearts
didn’t last long.
First our warmth, then our fire,
then our wild will-
one by one they convinced us
why we need them, that without them
we’ll never actually live.
One by one
everything we didn’t want to be
stood facing us, climbing higher and faster
on our ladders out of our hell.
I kept repeating my lies
and you kept repeating them back
and tried to call it love.

“Black Pond” – Nayana Nair

As I climb,
my steps remembered the shoes I once had
the ones that didn’t hurt so much
and how hands of mine that hacked through them
just to become my own person,
some sort of grown-up.
I climbed over the yellow soft dress
and the light that it caught
just to get this, this body that looks held together
but is not
(this body knows only how to fall apart),
just to get few more shadows that ruin my beautiful wrist
with their persistent passion.
They claw through me, to see how I am made,
how I look and speak once I break.
A stranger once left me at the bottom of a black pond
and called it love just so that I won’t cry
and in return I called him my love
just for few breaths, just for my life.
I climbed over the right to mean the word “love” thereafter
and the dream of knowing a heart other than mine.
I breathe as if I have sinned
yet I walk like I am happiness and determination in flesh.
I cling to all the bitter bits of this world
as if they would ultimately save me.
I climb over, get over, and forget
so easily, so bitterly
that each feeling of mine is just a shade
of resentment.

“the broken-hearted” – Nayana Nair

the broken-hearted know no love
for anything or anyone
that is not the one breaking their heart.
they see through you.
even when they say hello
they almost get your name wrong,
you can tell it from the look in their eyes.
they drink and fill every room with songs
that were not so hard to bear
when they were just noises that radio made.
they tell you in their drunken stupor that no one cares.

they say no one cares
even when you call the cab, drag them home,
hurt your hand in the struggle,
scrape more than skin, lose more than patience,
leave them on a bed not made
for weeks probably, you don’t want to guess or know.
so you close the door, climb down the stairs
shut down the part of mind reserved for them,
but remember how they have been liking and sharing
too many dark poems, how those poems
speak in their voice in your mind.
so you climb back, remove every blade and knife
and realize it is just the beginning.
you feel exhausted by the inexhaustible list of things
that can help end a life,
that can serve as a full stop.

so you sleep on the couch
or pretend to,
till your head hurts from pretending.
now that you want something true
you call your love
and tell him that you don’t know
how to handle this,
how to sleep and yet keep an eye
on the one whom you suspect is waiting,
waiting for you to close your eyes for a second
to make an exit that doesn’t exist.
he tells you that they are beyond hope
at the same time
he forwards articles that could give you hope.
he tells you to sleep tight knowing you won’t.

when you wake up at the sound of tears
being microwaved for breakfast,
you see another day that won’t be right.
you see them trying not to break
yet breaking and abandoning everything around them
so that their hurt can be felt by the world.
they look at you and smile
while they pour another glass
toasting “another drink for the world that doesn’t care,
another drink for the loveless me.”

the broken-hearted know no love
for anything or anyone
that is not the one breaking their heart.

“On My Own” – Nayana Nair

Once the shade of the shutters
are rolled down,
once I am left on my own,
reason and explanation rush in,
try to cling and climb up
the cracks of my heart,
and the folds of my brain,
trying desperately to stop me
to reach out, to find me
in the fog of fear.

But I am already far ahead,
my hands reach for everything it could hold,
everything it could break
and hurl them at the window
till it broke,
till I could cry
for the things that were robbed from me.
I couldn’t stop.
I couldn’t stop hurting myself
even when I lay half-broken under dangling paper curtains,
even when all that I broke pierced my skin and hurt me back.
If I stopped, I would again hear the steps
that always walks over my world and reduces me to dust.

“I Hope Not” – Nayana Nair

I stood at the bottom of the stairs,
stones climbing on each other
as my eyes touch their edges
rain dripping from the green slowly taking them down.
Soon I started to wonder as I always do,
when I see a place I have never been to.
In the days I had not known you
could you be here, where I was not.
Can the air here
remember your face as you moved through it.
I hope not.
I hope you never wander to places
I moved through, when you were not there.
I hope you never find me.
I hope no one remembers what I was.
For I am as I was.
How much would it hurt for you to know
that not even you can reduce my pain,
even with all your love.
I hope you were happier before me,
I hope you will be happier after I leave.
Just a few more days
till I think of the way to end my suffering.

“Can’t do this alone” – Nayana Nair

Hold me back
from loosing myself to the the slow pain
that reaches from within me
spiraling up to any light it can see.
Pushing me, climbing over me.
Not caring.
Needing not to care,
while my body moves
from one breaking world to other,
from one uncertain gaze to another.

As I read my own words aloud,
as I see myself trying to disown them,
to strip away my own image
that I must maintain
for others to be at peace.
I feel the need for the closed boxes of solitude
where I made my own seasons and delusions
where I rehearsed answers to questions no one ever asked.
I don’t want to go back to that place,
the only place my heart thinks of as home.
I can’t do this alone.
This life of yearning and restraining
myself from living my own life.

“Sleeve of Silk” – Nayana Nair

An ornament blue that reminded me of your eyes.
The sleeve of silk that had finally felt like mine.
The black of my eyes, the blood of my lips.
They took it away one by one.
While you looked on
almost happy to have avoided my fate.
My life became colored with
a dazzling red of sun
being devoured by sky and sea alike.
And no flowery word you use
to soften the memory- of what I felt
and what I suffered,
could remove me from the hell that I was thrown
only for you to climb out.
Maybe you never considered
how I had to pay the price for your dream.
Maybe you never thought of me
when you walked the evening roads
lit with the warm light of possibilities.
Maybe that’s why you stand in front of me
asking why I am bitter.

“Climb” – Nayana Nair

Three steps materialize in front of me
every day.
Step 1 : You tell me how you love me.
Step 2 : I believe you.
Step 3: I realize love is not enough.
Love is not cute always
I am losing too much to cherish the love in your heart
After that last step, I see myself fall into the darkness
that binds me to you.
Even though I fall
I clench in my fist
my hatred and mistrust for this world,
for which you suffer.
Everyday I wake up
to these three steps again.
Everyday I choose to climb them,
for you climb those steps with me,
suffer the same as me.
I will climb them everyday till I die.
I will climb them, only for you.