“The wind is picking up” – Nayana Nair

The wind is picking up.
The white sand unlike water
sinks everything too slowly.
And so the shade less trees of eucalyptus
become shadows that I learn to love.
They become compass that knows no direction,
but just piece this world to hold,
the silent assurance
that I am not yet lost, though my eyes can’t tell.

***

The wind is picking up.
In the middle of this small storm,
my careful hands writing the date on black board
suddenly realize the need to be held.
And so I fold and create a crease
on another part of my face-
the part that shows my heart too easily.
Someone yells out my name
and unknowingly they moor me to another violence,
another need that I don’t want to carry in me.

“Held Down” – Nayana Nair

Though I want to write of you
I find myself incapable of that.
Cause I have not yet learned the words
for the kind of person you are.
And all I have written about you,
the only thing that
can live in those lines,
is my heart that doesn’t yet know
how to love you.
The ‘you’ who cannot be held down
by any love.