“The hatred that I counted upon” – Nayana Nair

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When I have gathered enough courage
the only piece of metal in me
that can still cause harm
are only the frustrations I have at my own cowardice.
What do I have to lose today,
that I couldn’t lose yesterday
when I was busy resenting you.
After seeing and accepting the wrong that you are,
after uncovering every wound, every decaying part of me
that I didn’t want to face,
after deciding on an end
that would still be fair and gentle to your heart,
why do I only hold you tighter?
Why do I make up lies that only make it easier
to make up more lies, make up a world
where my hate is just a delusion,
where you are the only one worth saving,
worth love, worth my misery.
And even in that world, why does our love
won’t feel like love?
Why don’t you feel like mine?
Why does my heart feel abandoned
when I have chosen to walk into your hands
even after knowing my fate.

“A New Hate” – Nayana Nair

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Surely, I love you.
Why else would I need to find a new me?
Why else, after all these years, would my jagged ends
and my fearful heart
bother me, when I have finally learned to look at them
with the kindness I was not born with?
But do you have to necessarily know of this-
these messy feelings of mine?
You are making me change.
You are making me learn
a new hate towards myself , just by existing.
Just the possibility that I might be in your heart
kills me, makes me come alive, makes me want to
undo the ties that I have held me safe,
made me safe for the world.
As long as you are here, I can never go back
to the life where I exist with ease.
It is ridiculous how I am convinced
that I will be never myself if I am apart from you,
even when I know it is a lie.
Today, I carve another need in my heart,
that I once could live without.
Today I hate you a bit more.
But you don’t have to know that.

“Running Barefoot” – Nayana Nair

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He was somewhere upstairs
running barefoot on the dusty floors
of the broken house.
I could hear him
even when I stood waiting in the backyard
staring at all the rusty memories,
feeling the stare of people who will never leave this place,
who may never leave me again
now that I fear them for never actually dying.
I tried not to love him
as I stood alone waiting for him to get bored of all this.

I was too afraid to be with him
when he was like that.
when he read aloud poems
about death out of the blue,
and read them as if they were the only true declaration
he could make to the world,
the only true word that he could say to his life.
I would only later find out
that they were written by someone else –
someone who lived in a difficult to pronounce country.
He loved things like that –
taking up the clothes of emotions of others
and wrapping himself up in them
as he walked into all the unknown lives
that oddly had a room reserved just for him.

And always, I would be outside
waiting for the sun to set, for his heart to ease,
to be there when he decides to come back to reality for good.
I didn’t realize that footsteps had ceased long ago,
and so had his breath.
So I stood there letting my heart run barefoot
on the floor of delusion, in the world where he exists.
I waited for my love to give up on him.
I was afraid of being me
when my love stop, won’t look back at me.

“this peace, this staying, this wanting” – Nayana Nair

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I have spent 10 years
of my life decorating my wooden coffin,
giving food, giving faces, and adding height
to my imaginary friends
and painting forgiving smiles on my imaginary gods.

I won’t mind if someone out there decides to call me
“coward” or “delusional” or “hopeless” or “sorta weird”
I won’t mind if this qualifies
to be called “running away from reality and life”.

Even if I ignore the words like these,
even when I have found a way to survive alone
I am still left with these corrosive, acidic feelings.
Feelings don’t help – when all they do is
speak, wail louder each day.

They remind me again and again
that even a beautiful death is a death,
that loneliness is still loneliness,
that in spite of the ribbons and flowers and posters
the smile on my face is still not as bright
as the one love used to give me,
even if I have now less reasons to cry.

It is not easy – this peace,
this staying away from the want to be seen, to be loved,
this wanting to cry over something again.
It is not easy – to keep myself awake and alive
when feeding myself, seeing the light
only makes my fears stronger.

“My Pretentious Love” – Nayana Nair

i am delusional

i feel that i am broken
when i am not

i feel that one of these days
i may finally cry for you
but i don’t

i am in love
with being broken
with being out of place in this world

you are again losing
against my obsessions

today again i am planning
to visit my past without you

today i am again writing about, talking about
things that unnerve you

you are becoming insignificant
as you always feared

my pretentious love runs deeper that your real one
but i didn’t want to let you know this

fearing that you might get hurt
fearing that you might hurt me more for that

of all the things i have loved
i have feared you the most

“We are here” – Nayana Nair

Do you remember the day
when we sat on the edge
of our own growing hills of delusions
and reached out our hands
to feel something real.
But even when you dissolved as I dissolved,
for a minute my hands were not empty.
So even if we can’t offer anything real to each other
remember that you are here in this same world as me.
I see you, even when you think no one does.
You are here, don’t forget.

“Holes” – Nayana Nair

I do not want to fill up your absence with anything.
I want them to become holes that move and eat
and behave in ways delusions cannot.
I want them to ruin this world for me.
Even when time eats away my brain,
I want to remember only you.
I want you to be my phantom heart.
I want you to be my only love.

“Too Good and Too Sweet” – Nayana Nair

love?
no,
i suffer from no such thing.
even if i do,
that is an easy illness.
there are delusions that i can buy
that can ease all these pains of affection.
if nothing else,
my lover and my heart
knows all the lies, that can put me to sleep
even when my world burns.

loneliness?
maybe,
it could be one of the things that i do not know
how to get around.

self-doubt?
yeah, probably that’s the reason
why i feel lonely even when i am not.
no there are no bad people in my life.
all of them are too good and too sweet.
though there are loud voices of arguments
in the middle of night
and things i wish had never seen or heard,
there are threats of abandonment,
there are days when we end up playing this game
where no can hear what i say-
it is not much fun for me, but i hope they enjoy it.
i need to be a bit fun, to keep everyone around.
but it is nothing serious,
nothing I cannot ignore.

i need to leave though.
uncomfortable?
no,
not at all.
just things that i must get back to,
life that i must live,
people i should bow to,
who never ask me how i’ve been.
so i’ll get going if you don’t mind.
don’t be sorry that you couldn’t help.

“Losing my delusions” – Nayana Nair

I am stuck somewhere between
the hopeless continuation
and the frightening end.
The spiraling down tower of
love, the staggering me-
filled to brim with saved up hopes
spilling, losing one calming delusion at a time-
wasted on the people, wasted on reality
that never wants to change,
never wants to grow.
The soft sky falling on this world
talking everything with itself,
except me.

“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.