“I don’t want to be right anymore” – Nayana Nair

I wonder
‘me being right’
at what point of time it became synonymous
to finding out that his heart is empty-
my name washed out by the waves of the other girl.
The girl whom he swore is not his type.
“I was right”, I said as my hand trembled with anger and then fear
as I waited for the reply, for the apology, a missed call
from those whom I should not forgive.
But the way my heart is breaking
if only they would tell me that they still love me
I could have held them close to my chest
and thought of them as my family,
as the blood that I couldn’t part with.
I would have learnt to pretend
that I was born with a dagger on my back.

I was right, I understood
as I saw few more pictures not meant for my eyes.
(these days there are so many things that are not meant for my eyes),
as I try to digest the unfamiliar rage in his eyes,
as he breaks and breaks and breaks every moment we had
When I ask him “if should I stay around? if he’d change his mind?”
he tells me he doesn’t know his heart
and walks out into the night.

When I switch on the TV I almost expect to find
my name in red, my body in red
laying on the carpet that he loved
but had to ruin for a good cause, for a greater love.
This me, my death must be side effect of his love.
His love is all that matters now.
His love is not our love.
Our love is an obstacle to the happiness he can almost reach.

She calls me up again
to tell me how to gracefully give up.
I hear him behind her, I feel his despair in her voice.
(Must be true love.)
I hear him hum a song in the background,
a song that I have never heard.
I hear the ruffle of his clothes
that he moved from our life to her home
one betrayal at a time.
I hear what I don’t want to hear,
what I always knew-
they don’t want my forgiveness
even if I gave it for free,
I must mend my life by myself.
No past love will do it for me.

“Lucky” – Nayana Nair

I cannot digest
all that I read and find to be true.
Some portion of every beautiful art
hurts my heart.
All the tragedies and even forgettable bruises
could have been a play set under crimson bloodied skies
but they are not.
They happen in spaces that looks like the one
we might have passed through unknowingly.
They happen under the smiling sun
to people
who are supposed to read depressing statistics in magazines
and tell themselves that they are fine as long as
they are lucky by comparison.

“Unnoticed” – Nayana Nair

Yesterday, a line etched on my hands
slipped away from the skin that once held it so dearly
and still I lived on as if the the fate I lived now
was the one I was destined for.
I like to call it yesterday
for it is easy to suppose that we always knew what was coming,
that the things we lost didn’t entirely go unnoticed.
When in fact most days we wake up remembering
details about things that have gone to places
where they no longer have to care whether they are still forgotten
by people like us who do such a poor job of caring for anything.
We are always too young to know or too old to bother.
All that find a way to us through this forest of sadness
are disappointed to see what we are
and try best to stay, to lurk around, to be of some use to us,
till we drop them from our mind,
and they stare us in face and try to digest the excuses
that we didn’t even care to give.

“New Organ” – Nayana Nair

All the words that I have gulped down
are still inside me,
never digested.
They have found a space for themselves-
A new throbbing organ that I cannot name,
since I have never named my organs,
someone else always does it for me
(does it for all of us)
and tells me through fading words
of second-hand textbooks
how is it supposed to feel to be a human,
how I am just a complicated machinery
and why my heart can’t possible think or want.