“Carry Along” – Nayana Nair

I wonder if in every love
what I really seek is just amnesia,
a means to cut off myself from myself.
So I would know more of world
than just me.
But it is all hopeless
because even in my want to forget
I carry my vanity along.
I am only drawn to loves
that can separate me from what I have done
and what I want to be,
that can remind me of (or even become)
a moment in my life
where I was something precious
to someone else
and I was all they can see.

“Aunt” – Nayana Nair

“Yes, I do have plans for my future my dear aunt.”
I say, after I see her put her cup down and look at me
with sympathy and resentment.
“How can we not worry.
It is your future we are talking about.”

Actually, I never had these conversation,
at least not with my aunt.
I never had such an aunt to bother me.
But there are relatives and other faces
that I am hiding under the name of a non-existent aunt.
Sometimes it is me who is hiding under that name instead.

I am handed down spare maps
that I am supposed to study and follow.
Mark my route and choose someone
who could help me get up in the morning
even if it out of hatred.
I am sure it will be hatred
because I have seen no one one who has sorted their life
to wake up feeling that they have done it right.

My bitterness might make me seem like
a remainder of uneasy and uncomfortable families,
but it is not so.
There are just too many non-existent aunts in our house
who thinks we could have done better, chosen better,
lived better-
if only we could get our act together
and stopped acting like the world owes us some kind of happiness.

This constant re-evaluation of life
and its result coming out as failure every time
makes everything we live with
and everyone we choose as a mistake.
What is this “better” that doesn’t let us live?

“Half” – Nayana Nair

I always assumed
that people are working for what they want
and I shouldn’t feel hurt from what they do
when I was the one that got in their way.
But often, like me, they are just working for something
to know if they want it or not.
And when they don’t,
they move from this part of world to another.
Leaving behind
half done work,
with things that will never be complete
that fills the land with a loneliness .
Leaving people who speak of all possible things
that might be wrong with them
when asked “Who did this to you?”.
If you have a love that leaks, words that do not make sense
a story that never went beyond description of half formed characters-
probably you have found a home in my dream
and I am sorry for what you have to put up with
only because I didn’t knew what I wanted.

“Beyond Repair” – Nayana Nair

At some place in my life I realized that
I was ruined beyond repair.
And when I was done with all the crying,
with all the cursing,
and being therapist
to the girl that I was .
I grew up enough
to know,
that even if I can’t be what I was,
I can still be someone.
No one had to fix me.
Someone just had to show me, that it can be done.
And all the hope, that I thought was lost,
was back in the air that once seemed suffocating.

“Too late to care” – Nayana Nair

There are moments of indifference
that once piled up
seems more than the years I have lived.
There are too many memories
where I cannot see anyone but myself
running around in a dark cave
afraid of everything I bump into.
Not knowing that even if I shout
if anyone would hear,
sometimes fearful of who might hear me.

And even though
you are out of your cave
and I am out of mine.
Now when we can see all the things we couldn’t.
Now when we can really see each others scars.
Now when we have the luxury to know each others pain.
We feel
it is better to pretend we are still in our caves.
For too many things have been done,
too many words have been said.
And we do not remember answers to question
that we wanted each other to ask.

“Step into the memory” – Nayana Nair

I sing them a song
in the voice that may soothe their hearts
but fills me with feelings
which are very similar to words
like choke, suffocation and breathlessness.
Though you might not think twice about it,
I know what I have done.
I have walked into the prison that my life was.
But I love myself for taking that step
into the memory of darkness
that cannot actually hurt me.
It is just remains of the hurt that was.
But here I also find remains of ‘me’ that was.
And I am happy, for I know
rarely do people get chance
to become what they were, even for a minute.