“The home I had in me for you, wasn’t much of a home” – Nayana Nair

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The home I had in me for you
stood in silence at the
the slow curve of every approaching road,
it stood with hope
facing the ocean of molten cold dead ends.
It was a beautiful place really,
a place where sleep hunted for eyes,
if only for some consolation, if only to feel alive.
A place of hollow abundance, where one could only pray
for a bit of loneliness as relief.
Morning dreams of lace and scissors,
the shade of some long lost sorrow,
the memory of rain always remaining on the clothes,
the sunlight forever imprinted on your chest,
the light of the-world-lost always clawing its way
to the dead center of your heart.
It was the world of bleeding fabric,
lying on skin like a pet waiting for a tamed life.
It wasn’t really much of a home,
there really wasn’t much space there left – for life,
for you, or even my changed love-filled self to survive.

“the open doors don’t mean much now” – Nayana Nair

.

the towers
are open to the public now.
the crowd can now crow
and row and climb
to the better views-
a softer light,
a smaller distant world,
the illusions of gods
growing on our own earthly skin.
this radiance
was supposed to mean something else,
something more, something new though.
but these deafening footsteps,
this meaningless chatter,
these houses now growing like shrooms,
the clothes now drying on every step,
the resurgence of life and the blooming bruise,
the grass growing, the herds living
and dying in the shade of the tower-
they only make me cry.
even in their most wretched moments
they still remain things i can’t have.
the singular monument of hope
and its playground of chaos
and me, the only child
who doesn’t belong,
looks up at the promised sky,
feeling a new hollowness creeping.
feeling myself break
for the same old things in new ways.

“When we all meet” – Nayana Nair

.

The silence was deafening
because there were people in it.
There was a tiny space made of granite,
a smallness born out of the spacious halls
now crowded with people.
the air stale with staring. The long moments
of confused and alienating gazes.
The wait. And for what?
Everyone knew they must speak,
only then a god will be formed,
only then we’ll have a reason to meet again.
But they were afraid of everything.
which was not really a problem.
They also felt among many other things
that only they felt and knew fear,
that fear kept only them as a pet to be played with.
They felt good and miserable when they though that.
They also felt special.
And because we were all special and doomed
and carried poetry in us to be looked at, to be listened to
we all stood there staring.
We stood shoulder to shoulder, sorrow to sorrow
trying prove to others that we knew life,
and that once, once we really did live.
But all we were seeing and feeling
under our feet, in the hollow of our hands
was that place, the house on the slippery slope,
the home we could never leave.
We were all there alone. Trying to avoid the weight
of another person who might just end it all for us
by saying something stupid as
“you are a bit too much for me”
and “this generation is not capable of love”
and “poverty is a state of mind”
Or something as true as
“this was a bad idea”,
“you do know that we will never meet again, don’t you?
at least we are all praying for that.”

“how it pained to part. how beautiful it is to meet.” – Nayana Nair

.

the eyes made of glass stare at us
with its kind open clutches held out.
the eyes made of forgetfulness
and remembrance in equal measure –
they are beautiful.
they sing of the most beautiful fear,
the most hurting hope.
and we sing back.
me and my brothers –
we sing like we have never known death
as we hand over our hidden skin folded in half.

folded in half, we sleep in its arm
and we invent love, invent warmth,
invent meaning.
we hear it breathing.
we hear our lung collapse.
we have brought something to life again.
this machine of fear and ends –
it breathes, it tears up and cries.
i feel an ocean flowing into my eyes.
the suffocation ends.
and just like that there is
nothing of us left with us.

somewhere we will open our eyes
and stare at lips that sing of giving,
we will feel our hollow insides echo
with the memory of our own lightest steps
we will look
at the saddest sweetest children of this world
and we’ll know ourselves through it again.
we will know of the ocean in us
when it leaves our eyes.
and just like that we will be all that
we couldn’t bear to live as.

“blessed by the hands of time” – Nayana Nair

.

there.
see there.
that is the soft tree
made of sheep
from my dreams
that i told you about.
the one from which blood drips
the moment i find
the warm back of sleep.

there beside it
is the ink i never used.
the words
i couldn’t bring myself to say.
it is a cloud now.
it is now rain
or rather a promise of rain.
so it is safe.
and beautiful.
it is a reliable source for thirst.
it will stay there for an eternity.
it will only grow more.
it will probably
be the measure of my life.

it will be there
always overlooking
this faithless temple,
these buildings
filled with hollow books,
this smoke that leaves my body
as i burn again.
overlooking this farm
blessed by the hands of time,
where all the food i couldn’t stomach,
everything of this world
that i couldn’t accept
grows back again from the soil
for me to see.

sit here beside me
i will show you the world
that i am doomed to see,
since you want to know me.
see there, all that
was there in me
before i created new doors
in this world for you.
all this will remain with me
when you are gone.
and you will be gone
you just don’t know it yet.

“The dream of life” – Nayana Nair

.

I clip your favorite weather on my hair-
this everlasting rain,
these sad sad endings chasing their tails,
these graves of the dear, the most loved dogs,
the end of all songs.

I wear them
just how you wear on your neck
all the things I can’t forget-
my swelling hollow body, my soaring hatred for myself,
the stories I tell in my head, the hopes that never come true
cause I can’t bear to speak of them,
the sad sad beginnings beheading themselves.

In the land of ghosts, we waltz dressed in each other.
We dream of being alive.
Life seems so possible right now.

“A spring that tries to breathe” – Nayana Nair

.

The ripples spread out and march
towards the far end of happiness.
They die and are born again
under the wish of my yet-to-break mind.
I am carried to the place that was never made for my sake
but yet seems to be made out of a piece of me, of my own heart.

The far end of everything
has this one branch and this one bird.
This one song that seems
to be something sent by the heavens,
something that can’t be given in my hands,
something too precious, too beautiful to be bestowed to me.
Maybe for a reason, that I will realize too late.
But how do I stop before that.

I am always at the far end of wanting.
The perfect distance to always be aware,
to know what could be and yet know what isn’t.
At this end also, inside me, inside this hollow haunting,
is also a tree, a bird, a song.
Even if made of dust
it is my own drowning lighthouse-
my only spring that tries to breathe, retain its humble peace
before I reach my ruin. Before I learn why I must give up
what I always knew I can’t have.

“All this for nothing” – Nayana Nair

.

And this is the sorry sorry state
in which I find myself
after everything is done.
The checklist can now be torn
and thrown away in this trash can
that sits like a queen in this empty street.
And I sit like an attendant beside it
filled with vomit and dread
and thoughts of “now what? now what?
now what?” circling my head
like vultures who prey on words born out of
insecurities. Insecurities that should have died long ago
if not for the people who love you
and who need you to have these flaws
to feel comfortable around you.

They are so convinced that they will drown
that the only thing they promise you is a death together
and it is actually very romantic…
to see them take a knife and peel of a layer of their skin
and hand it back to you so that you can do the same to them,
so you can smile at each other, convincing each other,
that this is what everyone does,
this is what goes on in everyone’s life,
that this is somehow normal,
that this is love.
Because it was still better than every other hollow feeling
that you get from this world
that would only leave you wanting for god-knows-what.

This is the road of betterment though.
So things have changed a lot. I don’t handle knives anymore.
I don’t leave my body unattended in hands of strangers.
I don’t curse at people who tell me that I need help
(though I still feel that I should give them an earful).
I have forced my way out of that life.
I have quit my demons. I have quit lOvE.
I have quit things that hurt me with the promise of life.
It is almost the end.

It was supposed to be fine now. But now,
no matter how much I ring the door of better life,
no one answers.
It is night and I hear voices calling me back.
There are people out there that I have promised to die with
and they will be here for me anytime.
And if I see them, I will probably walk into their arms
and all this will be for nothing.
I know I shouldn’t be crying over this.
If anything the world of sanity
seems to be as unreliable and as irresponsible
as my friends who fill their head with smoke
and drive into the nearest wall.

“The Remaining Beautiful Sculpture” – Nayana Nair

.

The houses are all empty, the roads deserted,
the remaining beautiful sculptures,
in the overgrown lawns of this plastic world,
have no eyes and no intent to save anyone.

Someone tells me my new lines
and I nod and wait for my voice to arrive.
Someone else opens my cage and you are also
somewhat released from your prison.
We walk the small distance of this model road,
revising the conditions of our freedom in our head.

You hold my hand and it feels like nothing.
How perfect. How hollow.
But soon the sun will rise and fill us with light.
Soon it would all be beautiful.
I almost wanted tell you,
“this emptiness is such a beautiful catalyst
for reckless beginnings”. But I guess you already knew.

As we all wait for the sun,
you tell me you have a name and I nodded.
I realized I could not say the same about myself anymore.
I realized much later that you never told what it is, your name.
A name is such a hollow thing, to be filled up by the person only later.
I don’t know the order of importance of things in this world.
So I guess this must be normal.

As the sun came out of hiding, I was filled with words again
and the words that I wrote in that first light was,
“we both could write poems that can break worlds.
we could be so much more than this. and maybe we are.
maybe we want to be something less. something simple.
something harmless. but is that even possible?“

As I wondered what your real words looked like,
I uttered the words I was told to,

“the houses are all empty, the roads deserted,
the remaining beautiful sculptures ,
in the overgrown lawns of this plastic world,
have no eyes and no intent to save anyone.
i won’t save you. i will be just like others.
i will look at you and wonder. i will smile and forget.
i will love and forget.
but i will remember you in your crudest form.
you will exist in my vocabulary like waves and perfumes
and home and roads. but you will remain.
i will make sure of it.“

And with all the conviction and gratitude you replied,

“that is enough. i can be saved just by that.“

I believed you so much in that moment
that I wanted to mean every word I spoke
and maybe that was the moment my love was born
for you.

“Surface” – Nayana Nair

.

I want to write of things I don’t know of.
About the feelings I never had,
the bodies that never surfaced
in the rivers that exist only on the grounds
of treasure-less maps,
the feelings I spoke of but never ever actually felt
as if it happened to me.
My love was like everyone else’s,
so much that I was acutely aware of their borrowed nature.
I want to write of things I don’t know of,
about a love that is truly mine, a feeling that is not plagiarized.
When you casually say “you don’t know anything of love”
I don’t want to feel guilty, like I always do.