“Running Barefoot” – Nayana Nair

.

He was somewhere upstairs
running barefoot on the dusty floors
of the broken house.
I could hear him
even when I stood waiting in the backyard
staring at all the rusty memories,
feeling the stare of people who will never leave this place,
who may never leave me again
now that I fear them for never actually dying.
I tried not to love him
as I stood alone waiting for him to get bored of all this.

I was too afraid to be with him
when he was like that.
when he read aloud poems
about death out of the blue,
and read them as if they were the only true declaration
he could make to the world,
the only true word that he could say to his life.
I would only later find out
that they were written by someone else –
someone who lived in a difficult to pronounce country.
He loved things like that –
taking up the clothes of emotions of others
and wrapping himself up in them
as he walked into all the unknown lives
that oddly had a room reserved just for him.

And always, I would be outside
waiting for the sun to set, for his heart to ease,
to be there when he decides to come back to reality for good.
I didn’t realize that footsteps had ceased long ago,
and so had his breath.
So I stood there letting my heart run barefoot
on the floor of delusion, in the world where he exists.
I waited for my love to give up on him.
I was afraid of being me
when my love stop, won’t look back at me.

“Another fracture in the world” – Nayana Nair

The light over him
has seen his wrist caught in emotion
waiting for words to come and rescue this body
that is defeated by passing time,
that leaves it behind
in the memory it wants,
memory it hates,
the memory
that drains the blue from the night
and fills this breaking cracking world
with the longing he cannot name.

“One More” – Nayana Nair

I return to my unaffected neighborhood.
The success of my efforts to keep them ignorant
vexes me,
their narrow vision,
their inability to see me as I do,
their belief in me, the love they handout to me,
the children that look up at me-
making me feel smaller.

~
I have no option but to run
and once I start running there is no end to it,
there is nowhere I can stop.
Cause everything good in this world
reminds me of the unwanted anomaly I am.
Every dark emotion in face of others
becomes a part of mine.

~
Every day I barter with universe to keep me living,
borrowing time for this body,
one more light for myself.
One more body, one more happiness
(one more me) put to death
once I reach the dead end
that waits for me at the close of each day.

“Lovable Beings” – Nayana Nair

The familiar images of a girl with strength
and a guy with heart
and feelings that can be reasoned.
I found them everywhere in stories
but not in life.
Mostly they were just weak people
who learnt how to live with their heart.
And loved and let themselves be loved
with the faults that they had.
Here
people who were – what they were.
No love or devotion
promising to change them into lovable beings.
Especially when ‘lovable’ was defined
by people who didn’t approve certain lives
and certain love.
And the perfect image of love
and notion of the perfect people who deserved it
made me think of the emotions we cut from our heart.
Leaving us little more empty,
taking us a little more far
from the perfect life that we were told to have.

“Who seem to know a lot” – Nayana Nair

Nothing scares me more than people
who seem to know a lot about world,
who seem to know every answer
to every problem.
Especially when the answer
is that the weight and blame of this
collapsing world
only lies on shoulder of few.
And answers mostly revolve about how
not every one is equal.
I urge those people to make their homes in these
boxes of labels that they use as weapon
against people who were just living their own life
and live their life avoiding any thing
that might break their illusion of self-righteousness.
For that is all they have.
Nothing scares me more
than a person who thinks
what he thinks is best for the world,
who thinks that emotions and lives
are disposable things,
in front of the grand plan he has
for himself and this world that only he supposedly owns.

“Belonging” – Nayana Nair

The amount of persuasion it takes
to force oneself,
into believing the delusion
that belonging somewhere
will solve all issues,
will calm the turmoil
of all unexplained emotions.
That we can belong somewhere
just because we want to.

“LET’S” – Nayana Nair

Let’s sit in the crowded, tightly packed train.

with people we are partially curious and partially indifferent about.

Let’s be stripped of all luxuries money can afford.

Let’s for once force ourselves into suffering for few hours.

Let our legs hurt from sitting for hours,

and sleep rest on our eyelids, but never reach our eye.

Let’s witness the sun set on a land

we will never set foot on.

Let’s look at small hills

and wonder at the enormity of mountains

we have never seen.

Let’s get bored to death.

Let’s have no other way of amusing ourselves

than too look inside,

go though of what all we have hidden,

what we wanted to avoid.

Pull out each buried emotion and secret.

And when the trunk is almost empty.

Let’s find the happiness we have been looking for.

Let’s be at peace for a moment.