“Cursive” – Nayana Nair

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On most days
I desperately want to believe
that everyone else are humans,
just like me.

I write it down in cursive,
under the shadow of my incomprehensible muttering-
“they are not as bad as they seem.
you are not as bad as you think.”

I wrote it again and again
knowing I would never believe it anyway.

But I continued to write these lies
because I still wanted to make an effort.
Because I hated everything I could see, the reality that shouldn’t be,
things that needn’t be this bad,
this life where lies were the happiest part.

“Sense of Urgency” – Nayana Nair

Today I realized
what to call all that I have been reading for so long.
A person I didn’t mean to overhear called it ‘a sense of urgency’-
the desire to save this world as soon as possible.

It seems the enemies are too many.
I saw many names in the list of these enemies
that I silently agreed with-
pollution, dictatorship, bullying,
monetization of education, competing in a rigged world,
oppression of lives and loves of minority, hate crimes,…

I scoffed at some:
the collapse of society in the hands of socially withdrawn,
collapse of economy in the hands of those who want and do less,
the unfeeling and unapologetic generation that seems to love depression,
women whose learning and thinking too much only breaks families,…

“this is the cause worth dying for”-
I suddenly became afraid of that feeling.

As I read all the absurd causes I couldn’t agree with.
As I read and became exasperated at the words of those
who were convinced that they knew better
even as they killed and killed and killed
and got addicted to seeing blood dissolving in oceans.
I realized
how dangerous this feeling could be.

“this is what to means to change the world.
to change the world
is to walk over everything I don’t want to see”
My sense of urgency hated me for thinking this.
It recited every quote about silence of good men.
But all I could now see was the line that I must not cross,
the words I must not say, the knife that I must never hold-
no matter the cause.

“Safe” – Nayana Nair

My bare feet are as cold as

the marbled floor, it rests on.

And my heart is as fresh as

the smell of earth after rain.

My hands move on the rim of my glass

from which I drink up life.

And I close my eyes knowing

these bars will keep me safe.

I’ve got a key, to let in those

who care enough.

They keep me safe from the sick world

And from the cruel and the insane.

I take off my glasses

and they powder in my fist.

I blow them through the bars

on which they settle and seem like dust.

My feet seems to sink in the floor.

And the air is red with my screams.

There is ink on my fingers, on my tongue.

On the touch of shards of my broken glass.

I bleed blue.

It’s getting lonely here,

no one cares, no one visits.

I cannot stay here any more,

But my key doesn’t fit.

I look at those outside,

mocking me.

The bars were not to keep them out.

It was to keep me in.