“and soon it will be time” – Nayana Nair

.

in her two storey house
my doll sleeps on her silk sheets
with a knife resting beside her.
it shines
as if newly delivered and never used,
as if sharpened hundred times,
as if it has known the pain of blood every night,
every night cleaned
under the deafening noise of running tap water.
the metal mixes with her fears, with her trembling hands.
something again slips from her grasp.
and now it is time for tears,
and it will be soon time
for cycles of search and paranoia.
there is a time for every madness in her mind.
there is always a calm wait
before she reaches the next stage of hopelessness.
there is always a party hosted at the dead end of her lives
where she takes another drink,
and finds hands filled with warmth
and eyes that like the color of her healing skin,
the burned tips of her tongue, and her swallowed words equally.
but someone utters the wrong word,
looks at her the wrong way,
leaves the taps water, filled with smell of blood,
running in her mind again,
and again she lunges for the
the knife that fits in her hand better than any hope
and again she ends the song of her lover,
again she wakes up alone.

“Always Shining” – Nayana Nair

.

Are they finally drowning?
The sails, the flags, the songs
the party, and the expensive backless silks.
The rings and guns and blood shining.
Always shining.
They are finally coming for us.
We will again have someone’s face in front of us
at least for a while
and we will sing songs
that they have no choice but to listen to.
The cries and shrieks and the stories
that we had saved in us will not go waste.

They have not yet seen us
rotting
feets and feets below them
but somethings take time.
The water will fill them
but they will never grasp
the slow violence and its finality.
They will look above at the lost sky,
they will not know what they are looking for
as the concepts of hope and god and saving
becomes grayer in their head.
They will keep struggling
feeling all promises becoming breathless in them
and they will miss the point of saying goodbye.
We always do.

Darling, they are coming
our children, our neighbors, our dear strangers,
our ministers, our wood, our sky, our eyes,
our new memories.
Now we can die together and actually die
and not be haunting blue in this green ocean.
I missed living dear
but I missed them more –
everyone, everything taken away from us.
We have waited patiently, wishing them life.
We have prayed for them to stay away from wherever we are.
But now they are coming
and I cannot help but selfishly smile
at seeing everything coming back to us.

“Pendulums and Spirit Animals” – Nayana Nair

In my beautiful dreams
I run to you, as if you are my body,
as if I cannot press play without your hands,
as if the world won’t come into my grasp
without your skin.

When my eyes open,
I don’t mind losing the world
if it helps me get rid of you.

An animal in me cries out your name every hour
my panic filled voice shouts back – “shut up!!!”.
I must choose, I must give up on one thing,
if I want to be something more than a lifeless
pendulum.

In a room scented with disinfectant
as I wait for my turn
I wonder if the man in white coat
will sing me something beautiful
when he puts me down for good.

“Morning Song” – Nayana Nair

The morning told me that
there are times when we loose a grasp of what we are,
when we feel inadequate for all we have
and slowly all that we have seems to abandon us
even if they are beside us.
I knew what it was saying, I knew what it meant
But I didn’t want to hear it being said.
I wanted lies that could keep me going,
not an echo of reality.
I wish I could go back to sleep,
go back to being myself
(whatever that meant).
“But there is no going back”, the morning said.
“There is only effort, there is only wait.
There would be a morning that won’t be as cruel as me.
But till that morning comes,
there is only effort, there is only wait.”

“All I Can Do” – Nayana Nair

If all I can do
is to write up my pain
that will fill itself every morning again.
And hide the evidence of my weakness
on pages
that burn with longing for the fading ink,
the ink that longs to see
those eyes from whom they were meant to hide.
Then I am just moving my feelings
from one dark cage to another.
They continue to grasp for air,
even if the hands that choke them have changed.

“Day like this” – Nayana Nair

When I try to grasp your hand.
As I try to hold you back
from vanishing into
the morning light.
The only thing
my hands could find
are the tears
that I made you shed.
And the sorrow I had thought
would pass,
has led us to
a day like this.