“i have to forget more than just you” – Nayana Nair

love, for me at least,
was (is) not something
that can ever be abandoned

but it turns out
it is also not a flame
that i can preserve (save) by myself

as the fireflies
in my heart fade (die) silently,
i try not to let my existence fade in my own eyes

it is so unfair (sad) that the “me” who loved
should make excuses to the “me” who is suffering now

it is unfair (sadder)
that i have to give up on love
just because someone gave up on me

“Red Sonnets” – Nayana Nair

red sonnets.
every morning,
you always gift me red sonnets.
and i always kiss you back,
the color of my lips fading
in front of acts of affection.

–

i put them on my bed
as i sleep on the floor.
i stir my soaking noodles
with a branch broken
from this bunch.
i bite the sides of my mouth
make myself cry a little bit more.

“Fading Heaven” – Nayana Nair

You asked
“Is this what becomes of love?
When this star falls and loses it’s distance,
when it loses it’s light
does it become nothing more than a stone
to be kicked around?”

I knew better than to tell you
that the stars do not care
for such trivial things as our love,
that the stars are more than mere stones,
when they fall they will take us as well
and that no one up in the fading heaven
is rooting for our happy end.

So I stay silent,
never meeting your eye.
I won’t let you see
all the faults of ours
that swims only in my eye.
I don’t want to say things
that I don’t want to come true.
One of us needs to be blind to reality
for this love to continue.

“Not Cool” – Nayana Nair

Yesterday I sat myself through a video of jokes
then another and then another,
till I found nothing funny,
till I had to stop
because I was almost at the verge
of taking things too seriously,
at the risk of being offended
on behalf of someone else.
And no, being offended is not cool anymore.

-x-

I don’t want to be disliked
even a bit more that I already am
or of proving their list of stereotype correct.
So now I must find something else to waste my time on,
something milder
that doesn’t hit me so hard, that doesn’t make my headache.
That doesn’t force me to to be a better person
to people who expect the world to tolerate them
while they mock the misery and blame the victims.

-x-

But I guess it is just a matter of time
before my feelings fade forever
before a bit more numbness sets in my heart
before I see myself laugh at all that is wrong.

“Keeping Distance” – Nayana Nair

All my sketches of you
are living in a hopeless state of
growing hunger, growing questions.
I hear them talking to each other,
asking your whereabouts.
I have grown to become
a mother of many children
abandoned by her man.
Children who are forced to share a life with me
while struggling to keep a distance from my breaking heart.
Asking each other questions that they want to ask me.
I wish they would just ask me
“where is he?” “did he forget his way to us?”
“did he forget you? us?”

A saner me could have told them
“he probably forgot the person he was
people tend to do that life
but he cannot forget himself without erasing us
maybe we were no better that the life
that he had forgotten before us
or maybe it became worse with us
whatever he was suffering from.”

But the saner me
is also fading into the sea of past.
I fear for these innocent memories
that do not get to choose,
that do not have any say,
staring in silence at me
hoping I continue to love them
knowing that I probably won’t.

“Future You Saw” – Nayana Nair

You say, “There are two of me and two of you
and if we are trying to be precise in the count of us
I think there are many me and many you.”
Does it even matter, to think about
all the people we were just for a day?
To complain about a love that didn’t fade
but changed from one thing to another.
To complain that it changed
even when it found a way to survive somehow.
When it is trying so hard,
when it has stayed so long
do you really want to sit here
and count the ways
in which it is not what you thought it would be,
that it is somehow lacking
and breaking your heart.
I cannot hear you count again
all future you saw in me,
to be reminded
of all the things I hoped from you.
I cannot stand here and look through the real us
that we have, that has sustained
all our disappointment,
that is better than what we want.

“New Organ” – Nayana Nair

All the words that I have gulped down
are still inside me,
never digested.
They have found a space for themselves-
A new throbbing organ that I cannot name,
since I have never named my organs,
someone else always does it for me
(does it for all of us)
and tells me through fading words
of second-hand textbooks
how is it supposed to feel to be a human,
how I am just a complicated machinery
and why my heart can’t possible think or want.

“Conversation” – Nayana Nair

Last night as we talked in the dark,
I saw you hold a fire in your hand
as you sculpted the air
into the memories of people
that won’t leave your mind.
Soon the room became nothing
but a projection of what you see,
and in these moving
and fading screens
of your painted conversation
for a moment
I saw a glimpse of myself
and I thanked the darkness of my life
that let me see,
that let me know,
what I mean to you.

“All I Can Do” – Nayana Nair

If all I can do
is to write up my pain
that will fill itself every morning again.
And hide the evidence of my weakness
on pages
that burn with longing for the fading ink,
the ink that longs to see
those eyes from whom they were meant to hide.
Then I am just moving my feelings
from one dark cage to another.
They continue to grasp for air,
even if the hands that choke them have changed.

“Immune to Good Advice” – Nayana Nair

When my own opinions can’t budge the doors
that are closed on my face,
I run back to these books
which list how to think, what to want.
I do not look for how it is done
I look for what I did wrong.
But my mind is so immune to a good advise
that the words that I read make me sick
even when they could be my medicine.
But I don’t yet know if they are,
cause my wish for a better life fades away
in front of the genuineness my heart demands from me.