“Silent Dazzle” – Nayana Nair

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The words are brittle
the ones they ask me to eat.
I was told this is how you forget
but it really doesn’t work.
It always leaves a mark on me,
claiming a bit more of me.
My throat would have shined,
would have dazzled the world,
if they could see the shards of glasses that
are stuck inside, that decorate my wind pipe.
Only I know how my voice and my hunger
makes its way out of this maze.
Like the thief in the movies
avoiding the lines of red,
I move within my body
slowly, carefully,
afraid if what I might encounter next.
Next to this fear… words and speaking
and performing in front of this world
seems easiest part of existing.
My words pushed out into the world
are always wounded and broken.
And they lie on the ground,
in the hands that feel strange,
already losing half of their bodies,
their meaning already taking its last breath.

To speak is to see myself die in the hands of other
and yet be spared, only to live a bit more,
only to utter the next word.

Another piece of glass added to my collection.
Another drop of blood shimmering at its end.

“Something made up” – Nayana Nair

now that we both are standing lost
at this market to sell our heart.
now when you are just a silent mural,
i feel like pretending to miss you.
in fact, that is the only thing i do.

every day, i write something
that could make a better monster of you.
every night, i get better at shedding fake tears.
our love looks like a lost cause even now,
but it looks more beautiful
since there is nothing real about it anymore.

“it is all fiction”, i tell them.
“i am a liar”, i shout.
but they love me anyway.
they love me the way you should have,
you could have, it was the easiest thing to do.
there were so many easy things,
things that will never be easy again.
since, i have chosen the most ridiculous way to live
and the most difficult the way to die,
the only non-pathetic way to die in our love.