“Love can only be a safe haven, if we keep this distance” – Nayana Nair

.

There is a kind of spell
that doesn’t let love sink into my heart.
It keeps it all suspended
between the layers
of admiration and disbelief,
of trust and that nagging doubt
that I don’t really want to think about.

Like so many, I also believed
that this love-
the shining weakness of my heart,
is safe in the growing cavity of my chest.
That, if the world doesn’t touch me
and I do my part, and never reach out
as well,
then this will be my own small forever.

It will never be hollow
till I don’t test its reality.
It will okay, till I endure
the mocking laughter in my mind
and never think about anything else.
After all, how can I lose a feeling of my making
in a world where only I exist.

But in a world where only I exist
there is also nothing to distract me,
nothing to make me forget the imaginary nature
of my meaning,
nothing else can prevent the ripping apart,
nothing to support the falling structures.
And as I guessed, as I always knew
without ever wanting to admit –
it is just one another thing
incapable of being an eternal something.

This afterimage of another soul
that I try to indulge in,
couldn’t have been anything more than this anyway.
From here, this distance,
from where I can be seen favorably and loved deeply,
this distance
where I can summon in me the spirit of sacrifice
for the idea of this one pure love that I must protect at all cost,
this distance
that gives me a chance at love.

This distance also means
that love never touches
the rocks that my tears have turned into.
It also means that
in hiding everything vicious,
I have also hidden everything that could be me.

Somehow I have learnt to be okay with the fact
that this smile that I get, the kindness I receive
is because the weed that grows on me looks more beautiful
than I can ever be.
I have already dissolved in the earth
to sustain this beautiful face that I am determined
to be remembered for.
It is too late for sincerity.
Now even my hopes have been poisoned.

“The land of disasters” – Nayana Nair

.

As my empty cup for tea
came crashing on the floor,
I heard another sigh escape me.
I turned back from the counter
and watched in resignation
as the winds mercilessly pushed through
the cushions, the magazines, the old discarded
phones that made no noise as they came
to find death second time.

The curtains and the window frames
came apart. The sad smiles, barely visible
through the annealed glass, cracked upon
and my ancestors fled away, rejoicing for first time
in the brokenness of this world.
I recalled all the videos I had seen
about the land of disasters and the restless hearts
that live there. I recalled the reasons
that cause such misfortunes, the incomplete
distracted television reports. But I didn’t have to think
of all that, to know what was happening to me.

The sky was clear
and I could hear people walking to festivals and carnivals
and towards to unbearable silence of funerals,
trying to laugh as much as they can before they get there.
I closed my eyes and waited with anxiousness,
waited without hopes
for love to appear again and make a mess of the life
I had spent years to put together.

“Cure Me of Me” – Nayana Nair

We are too suspicious
when we find the hearts we can trust,
too burdened when they trust us back,
too careless towards what is ours.
We are too vain to apologize
and too distracted to stay in love.
We have stored up so much loneliness
and so many expectations
that nothing quite matches up to the standards we have.

“Clueless” – Nayana Nair

If I was to resent that everyone I met,
everywhere I went,
everyone
took something from me,
yanked it out of my consciousness,
moved within my mind
with dirty shoes and clumsy hand,
and left me clueless of who I am.

Then I would also have to thank this world
for all the things
that poured into me
that came to me on its own.
That shielded me, distracted me,
even saved from
my own expectation that would never have been met.

“Becoming This Person” – Nayana Nair

. When the pain hits my face
.                                                                 (those hands used to the have the softest touch)
. my skin would have broken up in the ugliest ways,
.                               if the same hands wouldn’t have rushed
.                               to cradle the crying me
.                                             without losing a second.

.                                                         The pain was gone as soon as it came.
.                           This skin has a way of healing
.                            that seems to me as
.                                                an unfaithfulness,
.                                                a betrayal.
.       As if, even my body
.       didn’t want to leave any evidence
.                           that could justify my tears and my mistrust.

. I have again invited the pain, the consequence
. of being “broken too many times”.
.                                                    The word “broken”
.                                                               seems like a shiny ornament
.                                                               that is meant to distract my eyes,
.                                                                                                                                 my eyes
.                                                                                      that are anyway not capable
.                                                                    of seeing things for what they are.

. I no longer trust my mind
.                            that doesn’t know
.                                            the reason for the anger (that I awakened in others),
.                                            the disappointments
.                                                      written in neon lights on the darkening faces,
.                                            that doesn’t have any account of how I ended up becoming
.     a person
.                            this bad,           this wrong,                 this fragile,                 this cruel.