“Agreeable” – Nayana Nair

Once I didn’t feel less
for wanting less.
But now my ambitions
are the measure of my capabilities.

Now as I try to get/buy/copy a new agreeable dream,
I am instructed to be ‘unapologetically me’,
apologising only to myself
every time I smile in a life
that I didn’t want
and can never love.

“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.

“Spilling the Ink” – Nayana Nair

You ask why I don’t stay and fight.
You ask if I realise that
I can win as much as others.
I tell you that everyone has a dream.
And what I get by staying and fighting,
are not my dream.
That I cannot live in this world
of regulated self-expression.
Always fearing when I would spill out of the lines.
So even if my broken is not as shabby and scattered.
Even if my madness is not the sort
that can get admiration.
Even if my hands struggle with holding myself where I am.
Just know that I leave,
not because of aversion to this world,
nor to find a better place.
I leave cause I cannot breathe in water
even if I want to.

“Confession” – Nayana Nair

I open a paper that will travel
many pockets
but will not have the good fate
of getting lost.
The confessions of my affection
reaches every ear
but not your heart.

“Your Pieces” – Nayana Nair

There were pieces of you
that were not mine.
I tried to make you my picture,
tried to get rid of the part
where I could see reflection
of loves that could have almost stayed for life.
I wanted you for me
and that’s where I went wrong.