“Goodbye to all the warm things” – Nayana Nair

.

The white curtain, the whistling wind
doesn’t vanish,
no matter how many times
I close my eyes.

The chill under my feet
slowly turns into the ice within my bones.
The hope within my heart
blinds me a bit more.

For every step I take
another cold molecule of my sense of self
breaks away from me.
Every step is an unavoidable mistake.

All warm things are now resting
in the rooms of past-
the melting summer and the stickiness left by
the kiss of ice cream at the corner of my lips,

the one tree that I burnt for three winters,
the big windows, the big dreams
that almost burnt a hole in my heart
as I wrote down hollow words recited by my teachers,

the warmth on my skin
as your eyes fell on me,
that whole minute for which you were
the closest star to earth, my new sun.

But every step is an unavoidable mistake.
Every step is a goodbye.
Every sun that my eyes create, falls
too easily from its branch.

No matter how many times
I close my eyes.
it doesn’t vanish-
this world that now I can no longer love.

The light that will never fall on you
is the light I will never see.
Isn’t it beautiful – this cold
that takes me a bit closer to you, even if like this.

“In reaching you” – Nayana Nair

.

If we were to meet somewhere not here.
If we are to be someone new, someone different,
for the chance of meeting
to finally happen.
I think
happiness, even then, won’t be of any consequence to us.

You and me – we – would find warmth
just in the vision of our open arms and tear-stained faces.
We would run into each others arms
and not utter any other useless promise.
We would tell each other without words
that we can be fine by just being together.

Yet, we – you and me – will find ourselves filled
with disappointment and sadness
and a blooming bitterness filled with light.
For the ones who fought and cried and begged
and desperately clinged onto the promise of love-
this love can exist only without them.

In reaching you, in finding your heart on the other side of mine,
it feels that I have just been carrying on the wishes
of someone who loved you a bit more,
a lot more than me, a lot more than this.
The hand we hold as we sleep today,
they have held knives. I know the scent of my end on your being.
I move in closer to you,
trying to remember the me who smiled only for you
and you hold me closer trying to waiting for something similar.

The ones who wanted this love have been long been killed.
the ones we want are ourselves.
“Do you even remember where you have buried me?” I almost said
but instead I said soulless words about some love.
Hoping to find at least this answer without your help.

“Crutch” – Nayana Nair

I let your hand become my crutch.
I let your feelings for me
become a means of my own validation.
I let “love” slip
from my mind.
Being the center
of your tiny universe
has ruined me, has undone my heart.
You are too close, too close to be seen
or to be cared for.
Each morning your face reminds me
how you are become one step closer
to achieving invisibility in my eyes.
“i cannot imagine not being your everything”
is not the same as “i love you”.
I wonder if you know that.
I wonder if you know
that this difference
of what I feel
and what I should
is killing anything humane left in me.

“Surely, I will love you” – Nayana Nair

The memories I burnt away
have turned into spirits, into thoughts
that hold me back from naming and keeping this happiness
that sits at my doorstep, waiting for my love.
And though the shadows of my past are tied to my legs,
though they rattle on empty roads
and never let the the dust of my life settle.
But ‘it is not so bad’ is also a sentence
that I have learnt to say with ease
and I sometimes even mean those words as they leave my mouth.
For there is a doorstep where a heart like yours
waits for me to heal, your wait makes the plant of trust
grow in my heart again.
Every morning I find myself, my lips
a bit closer to the the words
that only you deserve to hear.

“I won’t ask any questions” – Nayana Nair

I won’t ask any questions
that you can’t answer
and there are so many of them.
Everything I want to ask,
everything I want to tell you
is always something that I shouldn’t.
I am tied up by all that can’t let myself do.
But at the same time
I want some kind of happiness with you-
a brief dream, a conversation to recall,
a piece of you that no one else can have.
How shall I come closer to you
without alarming you?
What shall I do
for you to know my heart?

“how to love you?”- Nayana Nair

I want to ask,
“Does my love matter to you,
when your love is all that matters to me?”
But I don’t.
What good is it,
to hold onto such hope.
How much could you love me?
Already I dissolve in air
the moment your eyes leave me,
how can I let your lips touch my name?
What will I do if I lose myself
when I lose you one day?

-x-

But day by day,
my fear to come closer to you
and your unawareness of my wavering heart
are becoming insignificant to me.
It won’t be long
before I forget the reasons I hesitated.
It won’t be long
before I get drunk on the future that I has not even started,
before I realize that my biggest fear was not
that I would be broken in your hands
but that I would change even when I don’t want to,
that I would forget how to love you
and that you would be the one
who ends up broken.