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

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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.

“how storms fade” – Nayana Nair

twenty-six steps away from the cold end,
we stand together as if we are both looking
at a foe we must defeat together.
a child passes us by with a yellow balloon.
how misplaced it seems, this child
in this place made of storms.

this is something i don’t want to do.
our steps will fade into the deep end of this lake
while the mother in me would summon the face of this child
as a hope of what i could have had
if I could endure a little bit more.

an invisible small hand curls around my fingers
as your voice falters and you mess up our last song.
the ghost of your future, whatever face they may have, have also arrived.
so i put back the sweater on
and you check the calls you must return
as the ones who intend to live on only do.

“Experiment” – Nayana Nair

The unopened letters,
the calls never picked,
the feelings cut as a bud,
the door knocks I chose to ignore-
cover my ground in color of hope.
Hope?
Yes, hope.

Like the messed up experiment
of Schrodinger’s fictional pet,
I continue to see hope
till I keep my heart closed.
Are you still there inside me?
Or are you long gone?

I do not need to know.

The replica of this world,
that exists inside my head-
it will stand, it can endure
as long as I do not know
the answers to such question.

“Lead me to the same place” – Nayana Nair

The laments shimmer in the borrowed beauty
of words someone else made.
The pattern my words dance in
were laid out by someone else.
They lead me to the same place
where they have led the people before me-
not to change or relief.
I don’t think anyone whose steps I am following
was looking for that either.
But only for a way to look at pain
and see the beauty of the heart that endures it.
Not to find answers or reasons,
but the assurance that life can be lived
even without that.

“As you try to save me” – Nayana Nair

I have always looked at you with wonder and worry,
as you held me in your arms from falling.
Did you ever know
that I fell anyway?
The relief of having you close
vanishes in that fall,
replaced with only awareness
of this body that I live in
and this mind where I die.

Let us not talk of the emptiness
and incapabilities that we are decorated with.
Your will to endure, my wish to change
does nothing but add a little more pain.

But everytime I decide to leave,
I look at you once more.
How much of my life have I spent looking at you
under the excuse of ‘last time’?
It pains me that you knew of my love
when it was the last thing I wanted you to know.

“Another Candle” – Nayana Nair

I have been awake since the storm started.
My eyes won’t close
from the fear of losing this world.
Even if, all this world gives me
is reason to hide,
reason to lay awake.
Sometimes enduring a storm.
Sometimes waiting for it.
I light another candle
to burn away my sleep.
I light another part of me
to burn away my awareness.
I light all the roads
that I will never take.
All I can do is stay awake
and wait for the inevitable.

“Hopeless Wishes” – Nayana Nair

Our hearts are perpetually
suspended
in a time
that flows around us.
And our ghosts pin us to our sins,
while we yearn to be the person
we were a second ago.
Though our heart are
full of ashes and smoke
of loves we have burned with us.
We still hopelessly wish to be with the one
that we have destroyed.
We live in the distance
that no apologies can cover.
A distance
that many suffer
but only few endure.

“Cruel” – Nayana Nair

I always had a sense of entitlement
when it came to dreaming of a lover.
That there would be someone
who puts me first.
But I realized with time
sometimes you have to be that someone
who puts others first.
That was such a terrifying and distressing thought.
And suddenly all these heroes
became somewhat out-of-the-world, larger-than-life
someone I can never be.

To realize the pain
it must have taken
to scrap down their lives
for the sake of a person
whose love can’t be trusted or guaranteed.
How one must endure their own foolishness.
How one must look away from our own self.
Knowing all the while
that all this, built
by sacrifices,
can be broken in no time
with one word of hers,
that can end your suffering
and renew your struggle.
That there is no way out.
To cling
or to leave.
And to suffer each minute
no matter what you choose.

It seemed so tiring
It seemed so cruel
to ask someone for that.

“Must feel the same” – Nayana Nair

All sorrows don’t have the same weight.
And sometime its weight
is not related to the reason of the sorrow,
but on the person who endures it.
And there is always something worse
that could happen in everyone’s life.
Our sufferings may not be equal.
Our tears may not be of same hue.
But
a heart that hurts
must feel the same.
A mind that’s lost,
the whispers of blame
must feel the same.

When you don’t belong to earth
and the sky doesn’t want you
and you know not where to go.
Come to me.
I will hear you.
I will hear all you worries
that seem too childish to be spoken out.
I will hear the sound
of your deep breaths in the music of your sobs.
I will let you live your grief.
Grief to have lost.
Grief to have found .
Grief to simply exist.
Whatever it may be
and you don’t have to explain why it hurts.