“mornings break us apart again” – Nayana Nair

she traced the light on my chest
pulled out everything that stung-
the swings, my feet,
the shadow i decided no longer to play with.

the comparision table of veins and arteries
copied into my notebook.
the eraser and pencil that helped me document
in those tables my lackings compared to everyone else.

a page torn, and then another, and then another.
pages that learnt immortality by choosing my heart as home.

she stayed up nights trying to free me
as i stuggled and begged not to empty me.
she smiled and said the words she didn’t mean,
words that i wanted to hear from someone, anyone.

so i slept because she couldn’t be stopped.
“leave me alone” now hurt me more than her.
i opened my eyes and cried
for her work was done,
now i was no one, now nothing was mine,
not even my pain, not even her.

she dusted her cobweb skirt,
placed a kiss on my forehead
and told me to breathe,
breathe in everything
that i didn’t think i had the right to.

she told me to breathe
and to never forget what suffocation felt like.
it helps in becoming kind, she said.

as she wiped clean her traces from my life,
i felt better, again i was full.
i was full of her, of this love that won’t work out.
being full of her, i refused to breathe,
because i wanted to keep it that way.

“Approaching Night” – Nayana Nair

The light that drips from your skin
feels like sunlight frozen.
As you float among the spirits
of far away desolate planets,
who have found home in you,
who like me have found you too full of life.
You walk to me,
hold me close and bury your fire
in my heart. The mountain and the sea
that belong to you,
have erased the life
that I’ve lived before.

On the path lined with trees-
their shade and your joys
becoming just memories with approaching night.
You walk to me,
you hold me close and bury your face
your regrets, your tears in my skin
and give me a moment of the future I can never have.
And soon I see you dissolve in the sea foam,
in the waters where we were born.
I find my hands filled with your share of happiness
and sky filled with flowers that once grew in your hands.

“Inside our bones” – Nayana Nair

The cup of emptiness that we want to taste
but we never make.
That blue winter inside our bones.
It is not empty nor cold.
It if full of all our fears.
It has face of all we have lost
and all that can be lost.
And it grows everyday
by huge proportions.
It grows as much
as we grow small.

“Eroding Structures” – Nayana Nair

I checked my diaries
for the hints of regrets,
for the eroding structures of demands
I once made from life.
I checked my skin for the trace of scars-
the remains of the unreasonable
yet necessary decisions.
The sharp bleeding memory
of the blade,
of the hatred I inflicted on myself.
I checked the outline of my mother’s lips
do they finally approve of what I am.
While I eat all three meals
that were supposed to keep me full,
I wait for the forgiveness that never comes.
The pardon
that my heart
(half eaten by my self loathing)
can never grant.

“Make you mine” – Nayana Nair

I believe that once
you had the chance to be true to someone.
I feel that someone is not me.
I know that whatever aches in you
was a wound that you chose to forget,
that wound carries a name unfamiliar to me.
I cannot hold your promises
when my hands are full of doubts.
I try to etch my name on your heart.
I see you bleed
and drained of love.
I see my hands stained
with the sleep that you have lost.
Yet no brutality, no compassion
can make you mine.
This is not what love was supposed to be.

“Map” – Nayana Nair

I lose memory of the nights
when you crept up the walls of my life.
When you planted the seeds of doubt
and made my each step wary
and my words full of fear.
One day I woke up knowing
that I was not me, but you.
I was living the second chance of your life.
I could no longer make the decisions
that I want to make.
I just had to stay clear
of all your mistakes.
That was my map.
Everything else,
even me,
seemed hazy and inconsequential
in front of your plans.
But how long can we bear
the weight that no one put on us,
that we stole from their stories and silent sobs.
How much of our life is ours?

“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.