“Every evidence of your existence”- Nayana Nair

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The evidence of your existence –
they sometimes sound like trapped bubbles in ice,
a song no one wants to remembers,
a song that wants to burn itself down
on the steps of justice gone wrong,
wanting to stain the white marble of temples
that do not deserve worship.

They sound like dying ambition amidst flying hopes,
a revolution coming apart,
a future with limping walk and kind careful words,
a future fleshed out with beautiful breaking and selfish hands.

You told me “selfish” is a beautiful word,
told me that in the opening sentence to the goodbye,
that I am supposed to shout after your vanishing back,
to make the word “selfish” the first word,
to speak of that word with a smile.
And let the world wonder why you wanted to burn the world
for what you have never known, what you couldn’t have;
to never explain your heart, to never let their magnifying glass
and their dear sun around your tearful smile.

“Cheap Literature” – Nayana Nair

Don’t ask which part of me
are easier to love.

I have tried so hard
to become someone who cannot be be loved
without effort or tears.

My faith in love,
my faith in those who love
or it’s absence
is not so difficult to explain.

Clue: Every pop song that leaves you in shambles.
Clue: The books that you call cheap literature.
Clue: The lovers who want to get to the happy ending fast, so they can think about and focus on more important stuff.
Clue: The sappy feelings that you are not interested in.

Those who first talk of my skin and my volume when they talk of love.
(I mean you.)
Those who think that my view of the world, and how the world views me
is just a phase that won’t hopefully be their burden for life.
(I mean you.)
Those who tell me about my selfishness, my unreasonable fears, my unstable suspicious tiring mind over lunch as they run their blade over every bit of exposed skin of mine. Those who are satisfied when I don’t even wince as I bleed, just the way I have been trained.
(I mean you.)
You have made this whole process
more difficult than it should be.

Don’t ask me the easy way.
I might just begin to hate you for that question.

“Hope you feel the same” – Nayana Nair

I read about the life you left behind.
About the days when love couldn’t protect anyone.
Days when there rose a necessary evil in you.
It seems once you were good enough
to fall for the traps that I live in.
I wish I had known the fragile you,
but maybe it is all for the best,
for my cruelty walks hand in hand with my love.

In your room, as you smile
and joke about the tears you have hidden in your diaries,
about the new hearts that you had to grow every year.
As I peel off my makeup and my sarcastic words,
I realize that I am about to fall for you
(probably for all the wrong reasons).

Though I might not have been looking
for someone sad to love,
but ‘not having to explain’ helps.
It helps that you, like me, know and understand
that showing wounds sometimes hurt more than getting them.

“Saviour” – Nayana Nair

This sad heart of yours,
this heart that I love the most,
I wondered once
why it couldn’t rise above what it is suffering from
even when you have me.
Why as I sit with you talking about myself
you smile as if trying to contain the tears
that you won’t be able to explain.

x

I have always felt that even though
we were meant to go through everything together
it was just me
looking at you
fighting someone who I couldn’t even see.

x

Every drop of love that I bring to you
end up being just another drop of expectation
that helps you drown that much faster.

x

And when I am done being disappointed with myself
for being insufficient,
for not being able to make a difference in your life,
I end up thinking that maybe
sometimes love cannot exorcise
the feelings that we have for ourselves
and maybe I just need to learn to see the you
who is able to smile instead of all that you suffer from
with pride
instead of taking pity on you
and trying to replace you as your saviour
when you are doing a fine job being one yourself.

“What I Remember (3)” – Nayana Nair

 

somehow that is where i always found myself.
crushed between the expectation that i had from myself,
even if these expectation in no way could be ever called achievement,
even if i could fulfill them.
maybe that is precisely why i felt
so crushed when my plans didn’t work out.
it was not because i asked for something small
and didn’t get it.
but because even though i had set such
an easy goal to achieve
i was not able to reach it.
the problem with those small goals were
that they didn’t exist because i was humble
or because i didn’t need much in life, or was satisfied easily.
i set them up within reason.
i set them up within my reach.
i found them as something that could be a stepping stone for me,
as something small that i can hold in my hand
wherever i went
to remind myself
that i am capable of something,
even if it is not something great.
and that’s why i used to be frustrated with myself
that i was not even capable of the minimum.
i could say it is almost in past though.
this calculation of what i could do,
finding something smaller than my assumption of my capability,
failing at it in epic way,
and reducing my own worth in my eyes.
i can say it is in my past
because now the circle of what i can do
is so small
that it has only space for me to stand.
that would explain by blues.
that would explain a lot of feelings
whose origin i can’t seem to trace these days.
that would explain why i am no longer afraid of dreaming
but incapable of doing so.
because all my efforts are spent on keeping my feet firm on this ground
which i now know is too easy to loose.

“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.

“Safer Words” – Nayana Nair

I can’t write my life.

There is so much to what I am,

that is not supposed to be written.

There is so much that I can’t explain.

There is so much I can’t hear myself.

It’s not only the prying eyes of the world

that stops my ink,

that makes me cross out certain words

and settle for safer ones.