“Don’t cry. Tomorrow I will try again.” – Nayana Nair

.

The stones are in full bloom this morning
the heavy branches, my heavy arms,
this remaining bark hiding my old skin
invites new birds to make few homes in me.
The rivers born in the last frozen quarter of calendar
they fall, like leaves,
like pieces of heaven – the shrunken oranges
greeting the tarred roads as the old anxieties
swim to my surface, to greet me with a forgotten word.
My body gets to know ground in new ways.
My blood gets to know another skin.
The arm of a stranger, an unwanted breeze
holds me hostage and tells me to flower gently for once.
My skin gets to know rain in new ways.
Maybe tomorrow I could be born
without the morning storm of sadness.
There is always a tomorrow to try again.

“Shouldn’t that put me at ease?” – Nayana Nair

.

The skin of the prophets and lovers
hangs with the fresh laundry.
The dices and glasses lie forgotten
in the broken and mutated stomachs of our pet fishes.
A pot of porridge sits on the blue counter.
The potatoes, the rice, the marbled peas grow soil,
grow eyes, grow tongue, grow memories that never were.
The imitations of porcelain crack under the weight of life.
It never used to be like that.

Life used to be small and delicate and beautifully framed
within the carefully drawn floral boundaries of plates,
within the pools of small spoons.
Life is no longer like that.
Now the book of tales burn
along with the missing ladles
and fake money of games no one knows how to play.
Every piece of wood, every piece of our soul,
anything that burns, only burns only what we love.
Only what we love gets to die here.

Shouldn’t that put me at ease?
That something gets to escape this world.
But all that dying,
the small pieces scraped off again and again.
Isn’t that how we got to this-
this place where even pain is dull,
where even the hopelessness doesn’t come with a heartbreak.

“Folds” – Nayana Nair

You are gone
and I try to hold the spoon like you used to.
I chew my food with my left molars as you did.
The ghosts that I have wronged, that I have forgotten
now include half of my teeth, teeth you would have never used.

You are gone
and you are happy (probably).
So I memorize name and phone number
of your every friend,
I recall the fondness you had for them.
I wear your feelings when I meet them,
I wear your feelings even when they won’t fit me.
I wonder if they noticed how I was spilling at some places,
how I was non existent in other folds-
folds that used to hold you so well.

You are gone
and I am gone (or that’s what I think).
I am my work, I am my songs,
I am the adjectives you made for me,
I am the report cards, I am the dust that settles on it,
I am the afternoon TV shows, I am the language I don’t understand.
I am what I am fond of.
I am mostly just you.

You are gone
and I fear
there is no one that can
stop me from growing
into you.

“What I Remember (14)” – Nayana Nair

LOVE IS …

hiding my smile when you walk towards me
talking your name, just because i can
(just to make sure that i can).
feeling like a child when you call my name back.
interrupting the meaningful silence
with pointless debates,
pretending to sulk, acting cute,
being happy to act like idiots for once.
wasting away time,
walking towards nowhere
because that is what we do.

painting each other again
till we get it right.
loving in every way possible.
trying to become the love
that cannot be forgotten.
sweet words, sad past,
family tree in red ink,
lost friends, lost innocence
fill our time.
reliving the past that we suffered alone
in each other’s presence.
finding meaning in destiny,
agreeing with god’s plan,
begging for a day more
of this, this happiness
that fills us with dread and hope
of being understood.

waking at midnight,
hiding my body that you have killed for the day.
waking at noon,
looking for you, giving you second chances.
getting back only one word reply-
‘hi’,’ok’, ‘hmmm’, ‘lol’,’k’, ‘bye’.
waking up again and again.
going to sleep again and again.
murmuring your bitter name in my sleep
with tears i won’t remember.

silence – avoiding uncomfortable topics
silence – avoiding fights
silence – nursing wounded ego
silence – planning revenge (or something of that sort)
silence – being handed the list of shortcomings
silence – being handed ultimatums
silence – having nothing to talk
silence – feeling lonely
silence – ‘love’ has left the chat

waiting at cafes
that sell drinks which taste
like the mass-produced dreams
that make your heart burn
and everything with chocolate
as a cheap therapy,
as they play breakup songs on repeat
to normalize the pain of every kind.

“Grey n Green” – Nayana Nair

Once you were my love,
but now and forever
you will be the person
whom I could never make smile.
Now and forever
I will cry over you,
run away from you,
promise myself to forget you
just to sit up nights
trying to recreate a part of you
that doesn’t hurt me,
that loves me back.
I will melt my bed and my sleep
under the flame of your smile.
The posters of superheroes,
of dear but forgotten stars,
they turn grey and burn green,
like my heart does.
My hands will paint your words
on these walls.
So I will never be lonely.
So I will never smile.

“Only Me” – Nayana Nair

Stay here with me.
Everyone else has forgotten you dear.
Only me,
it is only me that carries you everywhere it rains,
everywhere the Sunday morning starts with empty table and aching heart,
everywhere the number blinking in my phone is not yours.
It’s only me
that wakes up in this nightmare of life
clutching what should have been your hand,
that walks into every shops that would have caught your eye.
It isn’t easy to walk into stores
and think of your absent giggles
as my only future that would never arrive.
It isn’t easy
but I can do it.
I can keep a space for you
everywhere I go,
I can keep aside an extra plate for you.
I can live as if you are here
if only you’d stay hidden with me.
They have forgotten you dear,
their thoughts are scared to linger around graves.
It is only me that calls out your name.

“Concept” – Nayana Nair

My hope is a concept,
a word,
lost and forgotten
on pages stuck together.
An absence that goes unnoticed
as the absence of the voice
who turns them,
and burns them,
and burn along with them.

“Aimless Insects” – Nayana Nair

A last chance again brushes past me
and a list gathers in me like aimless insects
gathering around their last light.
They talk to each other
about all the things that they had hoped
they would find by now.
One by one tears fill up in the eyes
of every wish,
when one of them says that
it spends its days
marking a good day on calendar
to end everything.
That every star it joins
on the worksheet of night sky
spells out the name of the one
that could have been its answer.
It feels sad because
everytime it is a new name
and sometimes a name that it doesn’t remember.
It hurts that the name it can cry for
is not one but many.
It hurts more that to think
that in that one forgotten name
maybe lies the memory of a day
that should never have been forgotten.

“Better without us” – Nayana Nair

The dust that lay on the page
that I left open long ago
is now a page on it’s own,
with a story its own.
I look at it and read
negligence and loneliness.
I read how things are forgotten
so easily
and how things are treated as things
by people who
live their life accumulating things
and rest half of it
misplacing, destroying,
replacing and forgetting them.
How people are treated on similar lines
but worse.
How we come back to claim our possessions
when they can clearly exist better
without us.

“FRAGMENTED THOUGHTS (1)” -Nikitha Nair

“Those flower’s withered away,the carved name got hid by the moss and her name forgotten by everyone she knew, including him for whom she died”

–Nikitha Nair