“you are lovely” – Nayana Nair

“you are lovely”

“you make me forget the unpleasantness of my life.
so i will call this love.
calling you my love is the only way
that i can depend on you without feeling weak.”

“i dreamt of you
sitting and singing on the blue couch
of my childhood home.
home that my parent’s respective loves burnt long ago.
you remind me of hope now.”

“i hold your name more dearly than your hand,
because your hands are so human that i can’t seem to love them
the way i love you.
i stop myself from telling you
how my own humanness makes me hate myself.
have you heard of the heart that changes its mind too often
that abandons as easily as it takes up new obsession,
that makes us miserable even when we should be happy,
even when we have all we want.
i have that. you have that.
that’s what i hate. that’s what i fear.
i stop myself from telling you
how often i wonder
that even this love for you might be a grand way of looking
at the easy way out.”

“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.

“today’s forecast” – Nayana Nair

today’s forecast
told me about rain
that might turn to snow
which might turn to pain in my knees,
it might turn into wishing for summer
(summer is always you lying on couch tired
cursing gods for seasons you hate),
it might move my hands towards the pills
that rarely save anyone needing saving
(i really don’t trust pills
if you are not the one handing them to me).
today’s forecast tells me i should stay in,
stay away from stepping out of myself,
that in my world only minefields of you are remaining.

“Just Poems” – Nayana Nair

My mind that understands
is chained and crippled by its understanding.
It only tries to understand new words
by comparing it to
what has already written or read.
It only understands feelings in terms of
the pain it has given
or all it has suffered.

-o-

So when I stand in front of the doors of a poem
feeling the sting of December winds on my back.
When I ring the doorbell
and hear from other side “May I come inside?”
I immediately know that this not something
that I understand,
that there is a difference
in reading as if
sitting on the couch in a stranger’s house
waiting to be entertained
and reading as if
I have let the stranger in my own mind
and allowed him to change
the view I have of this world.

-o-

Some poems are not just poems.
They are voices that never die
because they have never been born.
They are ghosts that we have always wanted to haunt.
They are names we give to our own suffering,
a closure that only we can give to ourselves.