“Often I am ashamed to cite the reasons for my hurt.” – Nayana Nair

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I cried only because
I knew I can be easily loved
if I gave what was asked of me.
And everything asked of me was simple.
I was, after all, made to love like this,
made of love like this.
It was an easy game, that I was designed to win.
And yet tears didn’t cease to dance on my lashes.
All the easy reasonable ways of living with others
were a wound to my ideals.
I couldn’t get over the dealings and the transactions,
the sick rotten give and take.
I couldn’t get over the conditions,
the changing shallow terms of affection.
But in all my loathing
even as I held back things that hungry eyes sought from me,
I couldn’t stop my own hunger from showing.
I also tugged shamelessly at the sleeves of another’s heart
asking for something simple,
a minor sacrifice, a cheap gesture of love,
only to forget it all in the next attack of doubt,
the next demand for more.
I waited for someone’s endless sea of virtues
to change my shabby heart that refused to believe.
My heart meanwhile
counted for, waited desperately,
even prayed
for all the seas to dry up
rather than giving up
the ideals it didn’t even deserve to hold.
This is how I stand guard to the happiness that
I won’t let anyone, not even myself have.

“Understanding freedom” – Nayana Nair

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He broke my shackles with his blood
and took my hand,
my weightless hand, my almost wings,
and held them in the warm embrace of his own prayer.

As my hands created ripples for my own amusement,
as my hands broke the bread that I would now get to eat,
as I looked at flowers for hours at leisure,
and sang wordless songs without the fear of being heard
-he cried.
It was beautiful and sort of silly – his tears.

He cries at the smallest things
yet is unfazed at the moments that require tears.
Like this farewell, where with a smile
he recites his memorized list of wishes,
he recites the feelings of hope he has for the ones before him.

He looks at me. He looks at us all
and says “you are free. this is now a game without masters.
this is now a world where you are as good,
as deserving of respect
as anyone you stand with or stand against.
you are free. live. live such that
you would need no one to remind you of that.”

As we cried, he told us that
disappearing is what he always meant to do
that wanting his shadow around,
seeking his approval, and following his words
would undo everything he has done in this world.
Yet our tears won’t stop.

We didn’t know if these tears were of desperation,
of relief, of love, of being abandoned,
of being left without directions or heads that could
do the work of seeing and thinking for us,
in return of our submission.
He told us it is sometimes okay not to know.
He said it is okay to hate him
if it helps us to find a way that is our own.

It broke me to hear that because
he spoke as if being okay with being hated for saving
was an essential part of being good.
It was sad that he had to smile when he said it
as if he was not free to cry or complain for something like that.
Or maybe I have not understood freedom yet.

“This is my thrashing around. This is my thank you.” – Nayana Nair

.

Ice floats and ships sink
but the absolutes end here.
For this red sun, that seems
to sink together with us all,
is just playing a kind game.
It is will be fine. Just fine.
It will pretend to die
just for our sake.
Just like how it pretends to be born
so that we don’t feel alone.

It doesn’t know yet, that we feel lonely
in spite of that. That there are things in life
that can make us forget, that can cancel
the sunshine and the storms. There are soft things
that gets trodden upon,
there is a kindness that we can’t value as humans
because it doesn’t come from the one we want.
There are things with weight and never leave our heart-
Like love, like death, like subjective harshness of this world.
Like the unnamed thing eating our dreams,
Like the unmanned vehicle of luck running over us-
leaving us alive everytime.
The friend who forgets us so often
that we believe that we are ghosts, the rain of care
that we try to predict in the eyes of cold lover,
the floating bodies that we can’t recognize.
But we cry and in our tears we feel the remains
of the memory that we can’t access.
we only feel we must cry or we will regret.

So dear sun
forgive us if we don’t return your smile
as we thrash around breathless in water,
as we demand answers in a voice weathered by tears.
Forgive us if we forget
that unlike us you will probably die alone.
Things get forgotten
important things like you and the other members
of your life-filled-lifeless club.
That’s just how we are
but we realize it sooner or later what they were.

I can recall the days when i knew you tried to save me.
You almost succeeded. You were beautiful
even when my life was not. But even that helps.
Thank you.
We may not say it that much, but we have written a lot about you
in the papers you’ll never read.
I hope when you die the papers that are filled with your beauty
can burn to give you a few more breaths.
I hope it helps even though it won’t.

“Another Round of Wrong Guesses” – Nayana Nair

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In that room
seated along with my anxious heart,
my crumbling forevers, and my noisy pen,
was you.
You are now more colorful than ever-
more real, more present.
You are more you that before,
more of a person that I ever could be.
I envied you and loved you for that- that I remember.

I realize there other things that I don’t remember well,
as you put on the record
of “50 greatest pointless questions of all time”,
as you sharpen the edges of your weak hollow anger,
as you ask me to play a harmless game,
another try at the precious once-in-a-lifetime love,
another guess, another stab, another cut,
another laughter echoing and tearing
everything that almost made me human,
another try, another guess, another endearing laugh
at the sight of my tears.

I had decided that won’t flinch, that I won’t cry.
I looked at the paper again
that said that I am not actually hurt,
that everything I suffer from is a making of my mind,
that I am just too scared,
too lonely to think straight ever again.
I looked at it wanting to believe it
but also knowing I won’t allow this paper to fix this for me.

For even to this image- this violent beautiful ghost of you,
even to this- I felt I owed something.
I still waited for you to give up.
It still mattered to me – this confirmation-
that what I loved
also loved me back in some twisted way.
So I nodded yes to another rounds of wrong guess,
to this game I won’t ever win.

“The door opens slowly” – Nayana Nair

I turned another corner
and walked into another house
that I knew nothing about.
The owner, the god of this land stood there
outside in the garden
telling a child how to create more beautiful loops,
how to somersault,
how to find more worms, more of everything.
An adult placed like a talisman
that couldn’t keep me
or what I bring with me away.
He didn’t even notice the grave that I carried in me,
the open pits in ground awaiting more bodies.

I walked to the front door and rang the bell
thinking, wondering what must I not be seeing
in the person I see as a fool.
I wonder if the graves in him didn’t love him back as well.
The door opens slowly and I wait.
I let my willingness to wait announce to her that it is me.
She makes me a wait a bit more-
that is the nature of game we are caught in.

Seconds and hours I spend on her couch,
waiting for the commotion outside to end,
for “the happy family on a sunday morning” to end.
She has four brother
and an almost sister that they never talk about.
She reminds me this a few more times
so that on the mental map of belonging and similarities
I find this unnamed sister closer to my role.

They rush in like a flood, like a rain gone wrong-
all these bodies that I am not supposed to see.
“They are perfect”, I thought to myself.
I thought of my mother, the anger in my home,
the counting of countless miseries,
the coarse harsh words that filled my eyes, then filled my mouth,
the gentle sunsets that drown only dreams.
“They are perfect”, I think, “for someone living in the same world as me”.

She tells them about my scholarships, about my fragile upbringing,
about the art that runs in me.
She tells them all about the things that they like.
For today she has made them into me.
I smile and say a little too less.
I smile as if I mean no harm.

But I know
I am here.
I am here and there is no escape
from the fact that eventually
I will sit in this room with my love
and with a glitter pen running out of ink.
I will draw, deepen the cracks that I already see.

Such is my nature.
Such are the songs that I live on repeat.

“maybe once” – Nayana Nair

his name doesn’t feel like a dying world now.
once,
maybe once
blue was his favorite word,
i was his favorite person thing medicine game hope
but now that he is burning all his notebooks
i believe life is getting better for him.
he paints skies for me, paints me flowers
that have never known cold.
once,
maybe once
i could let myself rest in him
but now that he has found himself
i can’t bear to be lost in front of him.

“Fed Up” – Nayana Nair

I am fed up of writing
the same sorrowful lines,
the same self-pity,
the same cries for fairness
in a game
I’ve quit long ago.

I am fed up of this habit of hiding
even after the storm has passed.

“Too Good and Too Sweet” – Nayana Nair

love?
no,
i suffer from no such thing.
even if i do,
that is an easy illness.
there are delusions that i can buy
that can ease all these pains of affection.
if nothing else,
my lover and my heart
knows all the lies, that can put me to sleep
even when my world burns.

loneliness?
maybe,
it could be one of the things that i do not know
how to get around.

self-doubt?
yeah, probably that’s the reason
why i feel lonely even when i am not.
no there are no bad people in my life.
all of them are too good and too sweet.
though there are loud voices of arguments
in the middle of night
and things i wish had never seen or heard,
there are threats of abandonment,
there are days when we end up playing this game
where no can hear what i say-
it is not much fun for me, but i hope they enjoy it.
i need to be a bit fun, to keep everyone around.
but it is nothing serious,
nothing I cannot ignore.

i need to leave though.
uncomfortable?
no,
not at all.
just things that i must get back to,
life that i must live,
people i should bow to,
who never ask me how i’ve been.
so i’ll get going if you don’t mind.
don’t be sorry that you couldn’t help.

“Keep You Here” – Nayana Nair

Even a harmless silence on your part
brings me down to tears.
I act in pathetic way
trying to get you back,
trying to buy your love
sometime using sympathy, sometimes throwing tantrums,
sometimes by changing myself, by changing you,
at times pretending that I am done with you
hoping that you try to stop me,
and in my weakness even thinking of hurting myself
if that is what it takes to keep you with me.
But won’t there be a limit
to the trials and errors that a heart can withstand.
What after that?
How shall I hold you here when that happens?

***

I tell myself everyday
I must work hard to keep you in love with me
till you can see in my tiring eyes how much you mean to me.
But often you look at me
as if you can see what I know I have become-
a human who grows new appendages of greed everyday
becoming a monster knowingly
calling it love.
I play this game by myself
wondering meantime,
why my love has turned out like this.
Why can’t we be simply in love forever
like were were made to believe that we could be?
Tell me how to end this,
this end that I want more that anything (even you)
that end is the only thing that is not in my hands.
I don’t know how to stop all that we have started,
how to fix all that I have disfigured with my desperation.

“I have an Idea” -Nayana Nair

I have an idea of Myself.

And how often, in the unregistered intervals of time,

When thoughts of world avoided me

with as much  fervor as I avoid this world.

I think of what I am,

I realize that of all the people I have deceived,

the one I fooled with perfection was myself.

When I see what I do not want to,

my mind desperately grabs onto a stray thought,

to distract me from understanding

Of what I am about to realize.

But I know this game too well

and this is not a secret that I have uncovered

for the first time in life.

It is what I half-remember in all my waking hours

and all that I know of in my sleep.

I know this lie, I have been telling myself.

But today is not the day,

to shatter my Idea of Me

with one cruel realization.

The day, when it comes,

shall be the last I breathe as me.

For I cherish this Idea

more than myself.