“I feel all this will outlast my fading soul” – Nayana Nair

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A new patchwork of needles
is slowly put in place as my fearful flesh learns
to rely than to hide,
only to know pain
in new ways and measures.
Yet so much of myself
I dismantle and destroy to give you
the luxury of warmth
that I can’t really afford.
With you
every part of me is lit up with pain.
Though it was not the kind of light I craved for
but it is still the light that somehow suits me well.
I probably knew too little of me, too little of love
before I pledged my heart and breath to you.
Just like I am learning everyday
how love is never enough to dull any pain;
I am also made aware
how love is still the best place to lose oneself,
to bury this flesh with kindness.

“the eyes they can’t stop looking into” – Nayana Nair

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the dirt on my clothes-
the white muslin
and the brown
chewed words,
the earth dripping.
its spots, that i dare not touch,
they seep in,
seep into the revolting blanks in me.
the tireless cutters of trees,
the sleepless lumberjacks in me,
look up at my skin and its new ink
they stop
and breathe in some understanding.
they choke on it, they sleep on it
they carve it
on everything they have destroyed.
they have new gods again.
gods that they will never pray to
nor please. the gods
they can’t ever leave.

“prompts” – Nayana Nair

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i think of parasols.
i think of wearing my miniature body made of colorful frills,
holding my own soft innocence,
not like something that can be and will be lost
but like something that will never be destroyed,
like something one never gives a second thought about.
i think of never knowing fatigue, never resting.
my skin only knowing the sun.
i think of classrooms fitted with water coolers
i think of home and its beautiful cold floor
i think of places i knew i could always return to
once i was done with my playing, once i felt my hunger.
i think of the time that i lived not knowing not understanding
the appeal or the need of shadows.

i think of stones.
their small happy weight in my hands.
the deftness of my fingers and my wrist as i played.
my palm holding them together,
scattering them, collecting them.
my palm feeling the coldness of the evening,
knowing time through them.
i think of the stones that grew on the sides of broken roads
beside my source of earliest magic
-the touch-me-nots, the insects made of velvet,
and the lost fireflies.
i grew up in a broken forest
wearing stones as brittle as me.

i think of fruits.
their colors that i loved
even when i didn’t like what they were.
they tasted too mellow, too tame,
too transient to me.
their juices just carved a bit more hunger
in my stomach. my stomach that was already learning
to ask for more and more.
i carved their colors in my notebook.
i dreamt of drawing them up on my skin.
this was before i knew what a tattoo was,
before i learnt the dangers of carving things in you
that you can’t possibly love.

“The ground I won’t find” – Nayana Nair

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Even when I run away from you.
Even when I hate you from the depth of my heart-
the same depth where only you can breathe,
where I can allow no one but you.
Even then
you sit there, in front of me,
reminding me
how difficult it is
to destroy this love,
whose truth and strength
outlives
each sad, tragic moment that comes our way,
each moment of separation
that we are capable of creating from our ugly wants.
Once I couldn’t have imagined
the joy and frustration
of having a love like that.
A love that has no end
when end is all I want.
A love that tells me again and again
that I do not really know anything
and takes away the key of choice every time from my hands.
A love that will not even spare me to stay alive.
What a blessing! What a curse!
To have this bottomless hope.

“Calling” – Nayana Nair

my heart-
i wish for its sake
that i don’t make it through this sadness.
for its sake i don’t want to forget nor forgive.
anyway, the next love
will just be the same story with new actors.
except me.
me-
like always i would give myself up
for lives of those who are better than me
and put my heart on a pedestal for caring too much.

i have a calling it seems-
of turning humans into weapons,
of advertising myself as an ideal victim,
of creating pain with numb hands
of making this pain immortal, an absolute.
this pain
that won’t even destroy me properly.

“Aftermath” – Nayana Nair

Like me, probably many have tried their best
to set their limits,
have learned how to stop before learning how to move.
We recite story of forgiveness,
of patience, of eternal undying love
to our children at night.
and when they fall asleep
we recite these stories to ourselves,
so that we may not forget them.
I remember all the proofs, every news that told me
how wanting more, wanting somewhere’s share of happiness,
wanting too much- can result in catastrophes.
that is how I learnt that some wants can destroy lives,
can create demons out of people.
The one who wrongs and the one who is wronged
just move around this world
trying outrun the aftermath of careless actions.

“A Dying Storm” – Nayana Nair

i close all the doors
as if a storm in coming,
as if closed doors can protect me from something so huge,
as if hiding is a better option than fleeing.
‘i wish i had created more places to hide in my life’
i thought this as tried to burn all my best clothes
as if i will freeze to death otherwise
and nothing i wear, no new face i paint on myself
will deflect or reduce the hate in the eyes that look at me.
soon i had nothing to burn,
nothing to destroy.
only resentment against myself,
only a feeling of failure
continued to live in this body
growing each second, trying to push me out.

“Break for Your Sake” – Nayana Nair

As I say that I am ready to break for you,
I wonder what is this breaking that leaves my mouth every time
I am asked to show what my love is.
My breaking?
Is that all I can do?
Is it what you are to me?
A reason to destroy myself?
I wonder if you ever said that to me
would it sound as poetic as it does to me
when I am the one gets to stand above the everyday trials
and promise to prove my love on a dooms day that might never come.
It is not the distance in time or uncertainty of this promise
that would bother me .
If you ever said what I do,
it would pain me more
to see that your love for me
is a time bomb for your own life.
How do you bear this pain,
that I can’t accept even hypothetically.

“Closer to Me” – Nayana Nair

Now the dark corners
are the only safe place remaining.
The loveless days
are the only memory where we can rest
where we can hide from
all the passion that we wished for,
all the feelings we couldn’t handle.

You once wrote to me about the night
that hung as a curtain over your window,
about how you can’t gather the courage to see the light
until I came along and tore away those curtains,
broke your shields
so that you could see what lay beyond.
I once took pride in being the one
who destroyed all dark cells within you.

But I realized too late that you were a flower
who could only bloom in dark,
that shields exist for a reason,
that each step you took towards your fear
thinking it would bring you closer to me
was just the beginning of sacrifices
you made to stay in my world.

As I lay beside you
trying to undo my harm
trying to teach you how to forget me,
what I regret most is that
when you struggled with what you are
I was only proud of my love that could make you do all that
instead of being seeing your love
that could do what I couldn’t.

Abstraction

“It is terrible to destroy a person’s picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.”

― Doris Lessing