“And maybe this would be the first time something good comes out of us” – Nayana Nair

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I told her I wanted someone new to blame,
nothing in his old rage-filled brain
has enough flesh to house all this hate.
I told her to leave me
like she has done thousand times before
but this time maybe it she could do it for me.
And maybe this would be the first time
I could really believe her deceit
and learn to hate her for it.
This time she can really mean it
when she says that we’ll be better by this.
And maybe we will finally finally heal
and learn something gentle from ends like these.

“Looking at the walls of time” -Nayana Nair

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We are going to remember
and we are going to survive.
We don’t need to peel our lives from the walls of time,
take back words we always truly meant.
We don’t need to forget the faces
that were the most beautiful to us in this world,
they continue to be beautiful even when they don’t look at us.
We don’t need to hate the people who were once our everything
even if now they are not ours now,
not in the way were used to having them.
Though forgetting is tempting and easier on heart,
we are going to remember them well
and when we survive
their goodness shall thus survive in us.

“The best way to disappear” – Nayana Nair

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My emptiness is finally put to use.
The fishes swim in me –
the luminous disfigured creatures of depth
and the beautiful dying ones of light,
fill me up one by one.

I teach them songs of sorrow.
I hold them in my endless embrace
singing them back to life
and in return they let me feel like someone
who can protect, love, and shield.
They let me feel things no human ever could.

Even though I hate to be seen
I smile as my body is put on display.
My skin, the strongest glass.
My skin, the weakest beams.
The shallowest of oceans I become.

Humans hold hands, hold themselves
as they stand before me.
They find possibilities, mysteries, awe
in all that I hold inside,
in all that isn’t me.

“Mechanisms” – Nayana Nair

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I have a thing about ends-
I cannot do it,
it has to be done to me.
It must happen.
Things must continue
till they rot and bleed.
First in places where no one can see
and then in places where no one can look away from.
And words must be said – cruel words.
They must be said by someone, but it won’t be me.

I rush up to the jar of those colorful wrong words
and choose first, all the words
that seem like hope but they aren’t,
while purposefully leaving behind
in the hand of others only those words
that seem like rage, but it is not,
it is more of helplessness,
but I do not tell them that.
So now, in my tears they see
the new monsters that they are made of,
the monster I can’t bear to be.

Even as they become problems
that they never wanted to be,
I must remain good, I must remain kind.
I must remain the one that held on.
I must save my illusions at any cost.
I won’t give the excuse of my weakness, of my broken heart,
of the fragile thread from which my existence is suspended,
of how I am already clawed open and torn apart by life,
or how I would rather at the end of it
want someone to hate than to mourn things that died
with all the good parts of me.
Or how I have always loved everything a bit too much.
I won’t give the excuses even I cannot believe in.

I refuse to give up
with spite and with malice even
because how can I ever walk towards any goodness in world again
knowing the feeling of the dying pulse of a miracle under my hands.
I am ready to suffer. I am ready to break every heart including mine.
I am ready to paint this world with monsters and be the evil one
but I refuse to do that killing.

“I just need to walk till that moment” – Nayana Nair

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A crowd fills the river now.
The winds wears
new streamers, new sails today.
There is a festivals of flower
with a funeral of spring.
There is something in the air
that wants me to live,
though there is something else
in my heart
that cries for an end.
But the festivals go on
and I keep walking in the crowd.
I smile till I forget
the weight of that smile.
I keep walking till
the crowd fills my heart,
till I wear the world on me.
Till I feel the hand of wind
embracing me as if
I am also one of its dearest kids.
I am ready to give up my hate,
I am ready to believe,
I am ready to be good
if I am held like that once –
like I matter, like I have all that I need to live,
like I can be loved and be hated and be nothing to someone
and yet worthy of this world.

“Can of Worms” – Nayana Nair

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I have lived well.
I have lived a happy life.
I hold nothing but love for the world.
I wake up everyday hoping for…????
When I close my eyes I see…?????
and then I feel hopelessly …???????

what is it that i was supposed to say?
i know the right words, i know the truth
i just can’t seem to remember the lie
that was supposed to make everything easy.
i only remember the words that will wreck the world.

the words that grow in me
is another can of worms
another name that i should not utter
another stain on my character that is invisible
till i do not acknowledge it

or so i am told

i hate that they are right

“When will I ever learn to see a human as a human, nothing more, nothing less” – Nayana Nair

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A boy covered in white fur,
and a silent dear pet
made of breaking human skin-
they stand together at my horizon.
They float together,
they move into the melting sun.
They melt and become one with
everything I have lost.
They color everything I am yet to lose.

I call out to them
but only wrong names,
only these wretched wrong names
come out of my cursed bleeding mouth.
I call out the names they don’t understand.
No one gets the broken syllables
they stand for in my heart.
“come back my innocence, come back my truth”,
but they won’t hear.
Those words mean nothing to them.
That’s how things should be,
even if it doesn’t make me glad.

My view and my ideas of them are bound to me,
everything false sticks to my skin.
They can’t chase them
out there.
What a thing to be thankful for!
They won’t learn more reasons to hate me.
Reasons I deserve to be hated for.
My own hate is enough for me.
What a contentment have I laughably found now!

“it is about getting a bit too much in life” – Nayana Nair

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so why the long face?
what’s ailing you today?

i am confused.

about love? again?

no, about me.

about your skin?
about the directions your eyes take?
or about the growing all wrong feeling?

about “me in love”.
about “me” and “love”.

so is your skin cracking like mine?
has loneliness finally figured out how to hurt you best?
is it about why there is so much of love in this world
and why only you aren’t getting any?

no, it is about getting a bit too much.
about finding love again and again,
and being loved back again and again,
and before you get irritated,
it is also about love ending again and again.

so do you hate them for the end?
or are you still loving them when you shouldn’t?

i haven’t figured out that yet.
sort of don’t want to .
i am already depressed about not having that “one love”.
now the sunset reminds me of one person
and the rains remind of another.
i remember them all, not with hate, not with love,
but with fondness.

is that a good thing? or something bad?

i don’t know.
they are taking too much space in me
i was true to everyone so it feels rude and thankless
to get rid of things that were once my only joy.
but i feel it is all making my heart bigger.

don’t people normally want?
a bigger heart?

but it making my head a mess.
my immature and desperate want
of having that one person, only one person in my eyes
is lost cause.
i can give my whole life to one
but they will know, always know
that i am missing so many parts.

so
since the desperate and immature past you has given up
don’t wait around for another immature person
to count and complain about your parts.

but i am still the immature one even now.
i have always been that.
i wouldn’t be worrying over
my own split attention, if not split heart,
if i wanted to be the bigger better person
that life i forcing me to be and to have.

don’t worry
life is long. you will grow.
you will grow to fit your heart.

what if i don’t?

then we wait, till it does.

“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.

“Our knowing of faith” – Nayana Nair

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“What do you know of prayers?” she asked,
as she held my hands together within her own.
I asked her “Don’t you know anything about me?”
and there appeared another crack on her hands,
there bloomed another rose in her hair
there was another smile – the “looking down” smile,
“you don’t know any better” smile,
“you will soon thank me” smile,
“I know you hate my smile” smile.
I tried to imitate it, to drape it on my own face.
Cause even if it didn’t seem like that, I loved her smile.

I stared at her smile
wanting to save it somewhere in me. I stared
at her small beautiful parts
wanting to un-see the person she is in this moment.
I am always trying
to forget how suffocated these moments with her are.
I am always trying to forget
that with her words of love there was always a plea,
a suggestion, a manipulation – to make me something like her.

Would it make me seem pathetic, petty, or romantic?
if i called her a poison. Though everyone here is a poison,
even me, but she is a poison for me, the only poison
that works on me. The only one I didn’t want a death from.
She tells me about another deity I will never believe in.
She tells me a bit more about saving, about faith, about her own self
that can never be broken, how even breaking can’t end her now.
I wished she was right, I wished there would be never an end to her.

I wished for all kinds of ends for myself,
even the ones without her. But in no version
did I invent an agreeable version of her that will better for me.
She has to be herself. Whatever that might mean for me.
I wonder if there would come a day like that, a day when
she would love me like that. Do I even want a day like that?
Can I even tolerate a change in her?
Wouldn’t that break me more than anything?

I get up and say something about “better things to do”
and she says something about “the dangers to the faithless”
and I can only smile for now
at this weird, beautiful, messed up part of our life
at our of differences, knowing of love,
at our knowing of faith in different things that save us in their own ways.