“Dreams come true” – Nayana Nair

.

sometimes i dream of emptiness – it looks festive and grand,
it looks like people rushing in
with their wants and talks about wants
and talks about not having their name in any list of wants
and talks about wants that they saw the other say
that they just couldn’t wrap their heads around
and talks about wants that didn’t last that long
and talks about wants that don’t seem to die
and someone wanting to burn some wants
cause they just can’t stand them, cause they just can’t stand
a world that is not filled with their lookalikes
and someone wanting to become a 24×7 monsoon,
so that such an anarchic want can never see any fruit
and then 100 people enter a room which only has room for 10
they are torn between killing other 90 or making the room bigger
by bulldozing the rooms around,
some have already started to eat less and breathe less
and want less so that they take up less space, cause nothing seems to be working,
they sometimes talk about wanting back the past, wanting back the limbs and heart
that, they realized too late, won’t grow back
and the room is now bigger where 100 people are now 10000 people
and the other rooms and other worlds
are now floors the people with better and certified normal wants walk upon
and some keep digging for the ones that are buried, for the ones that still can be saved,
they keep getting arrested and get locked up in cells that have always room for more
and things like that just keep happening-
hurtful things, beautiful hurtful things, ugly hurtful things.
and my eyes see only wants and hurts
and i am not sure
if it is a good thing or a bad thing
that i can’t see another human in sight.

“Is this what this distance, this decision means?” – Nayana Nair

With my back to the my cold family name
the metallic alphabets printing hard on my clothes,
I stand
with my feet half out of my pretty shoes –
with my painted nails still hidden in the skin of another animal,
my hands revolving the beautiful replica of Saturn
around the plastic heart on my elaborate key chain- a stage of its own.
I stand and wait for you to open your door on the floor above.
I hear a faint click, a phone ring, footsteps running away from the world
(why do I feel such sadness when I hear that?),
a door left open (to everyone but me)
I sit in the middle of my living room floor
staring up, at the underside- the creeping mold
of the stage where I played your lover, your nemesis.
It is cruel and incomprehensible that we can still live,
take calls, make jokes, eat, and still have the want to live.
After hurting ourselves and the world for the sake of love,
after all that, is this is it?
When you find your room, your world without me
which direction does your heart turn towards?
Do forget from time to time that we are supposed to forget each other?
When I find my loneliness becoming greater than me,
when it starts spilling out of me on dinner table,
when it makes me lose my mind, am I allowed to let go of you?
Is this what this distance, this decision means?
I hear your window open, I hear your excited voice
(why do I feel color of anger filling me again?).
I wonder if you have really found your new life
or is this an act you have put for my benefit?
Your kindness could only be in my head, as was your love.
TV drowns your voice again
and I thank all the accidents, all the things out of my control,
everything that moves us away from each other.
Otherwise, I never could.

“Come home” – Nayana Nair

Come home
and lie that you know
how to miss me.
Pass me by a thousand time
in these small rooms,
none which feel like the home I wanted.
Once you told me that the issue is
that I want a lot of things, that I want too much.
That wanting doesn’t suit someone like me.
I find the person I am not in everything you like,
everything that makes you loose control,
everything that forces you to make mistakes.
When I cried the first time,
you told me that you can’t help
that your heart doesn’t say my name.
You told me as an assurance
that your heart doesn’t know love for anyone else either.
I am a person like that, who hoped
that you can be mine as long as you are no one else’s.
I am person like that, who stayed because no one did
and no one would.
A person who cries everyday, only to hear your assurances again,
only to hear the lies that can save my breaking love for you.

“Unlike me” – Nayana Nair

Sometimes I fear you –
the way you can make me want to change,
the way you make me act unlike myself.
I doubt that maybe I am too easily convinced
and too easily affected by your existence.

I wonder
my effort to become someone you deserve
how is it different from the insincerity
that I have always shown to this world.

When I grow tired of this act
I might end up making you the excuse,
might call you the liquor that I regret giving control to.
I am already finding it easy to resent you
for everything I do wrong.

“You have changed my life”-
is the sweetest sad thing that I never want to say.

“What do you know?” – Nayana Nair

why is it so
that i can only choose love if i let myself look weak.
it should have been easy to look weak and crumbling,
when that is what i feel all the time.
but it isn’t easy.
maybe because the weakness of my heart has never made me look incompetent,
it just made me look cold and aloof.
being good for nothing is more tragic than being broken or being hated.

how hard i have tried all my life to be good at something.
so that i am not useless, so that people don’t leave me behind on purpose,
so that i can at least look like someone capable and not be embarrassed of myself.

after all the years of running around
and making myself believe
that soon, soon i will become someone i can be proud of;
instead of finding myself, i find you.
i find the in myself the want
to let go of this control, that hurts my hands,
but letting go hurts my pride.

somehow i can’t stop blaming you for asking me to live as me,
for asking me to stop hurting myself.
what do you know about the life i have lived?
what do you know about the things i have sacrificed for living like this?
how can you ask me to break what i have built for years?

i cry, i push you away, i cling to the what i am supposed to be,
asking you why you can’t just be what i supposed you would be.
again i am asked to choose between me and this world.
again i know i will choose myself.
(by choosing to please the world rather than choosing myself?)
but you have some nerve to declare that i won’t.
i hate you for your stupid confidence
and your disregard for all that i will lose.

“End Our Tiring Travel” – Nayana Nair

Are we just each others excuse,
just a means to tie up this mind
to a worry and to a calmness made of flesh.
To end our tiring travel
between the states of “living-with-wavering-doubt-of-whether-to-exist-or-not”
to “searching-for-another-temporary-purpose-to-act-as-reins-to-our-heart-going-out-of-control”.
What happens when we are no longer a good enough anchor for each other?
What happens when we no longer want to be moored
to the reasons of this world?

Day 3- Quote Challenge

“You’ve become an accomplice in your own annihilation and there is nothing you can do about it. Everything you do closes a door somewhere ahead of you. And finally there is only one door left.”
― Cormac McCarthy

Now I am not sure what this quote exactly makes me feel. But every time I read this, I see in front of me that one door left. It fills me up with a kind of relief and fear at the same time. It is as if every small action of mine will change my life in a drastic ways. It is like choosing a destiny that I cannot see. Irreversible nature of my decision, the narrowing of the world to fewer door, fewer dreams, fewer options is frightening. But it also fills me with a sense of responsibility and control. It feels like a power that I do not know how to put to use, but it is still a power. Like a blind person walking on a minefield, where even having eyes may not be of much help considering the chaos that surrounds me. Even if a portion of choice is in my hand, I do have a say, but not much. I cannot turn back and look at all the doors I can’t go back through. I am just left with that one line I am travelling (many that I can’t), the line my decisions create to that last door, the line we call fate.

“My Liberation” – Nayana Nair

The first half of my life
was spent following the lines drawn by other
and second half spent on searching and choosing
the people who will draw those lines for me.
My liberation didn’t come as a cloudburst
but only as shower.
It only came as the the control of smaller
insignificant parts of greater machinery of life
that continues to  ignore my wish and my will.

Sidelines

I’m not the one
who swims too far out to sea;
I am the one who waves from shore
vainly and in despair.
Life is what happens to someone else;
I stand on the sidelines and wring my hands.

-“Poem for my Birthday“, Lisel Mueller

“This Life”- Nayana Nair

Slowly,

I am killing myself.

One drop at a time.

With each drop of time

that leaves this life,

I observe helplessly

but still having control.

Any second, I can save myself.

But I choose not to.

Everyone dies anyway.

Everyone is dying

this same death.