“Playlist” – Nayana Nair

I go through my playlist,
looking for all the songs
that like-crazed people
have written for me and
for lonely nights as these.
This voice of stranger that sings my pain
takes me back to this same bed
and same sorrow
somewhere in the past that I want to loose.
Someone sits beside me yet again.
And this weight
is as frightening
as comforting.
To know that the spirits of the nights
that I have killed
are again here,
to take away a friend of theirs.

On nights like these,
I prefer the company
of sad cries that people call songs,
of walking memories that people call ghost.