“The Fiction of Dragonfly and Ducks” – Nayana Nair

.

Sometimes it was okay
and we would all know it,
even when the the shadow of our protectors
still weighed heavy, their greed
still felt on our backs as the soft whip.
Sometimes we felt loved by our land
even as the flag with our faces
stared down at our sewn lips.
We would wake up,
step out of our tired used skins
and know it was only now
we could pray to each other.
Now when the towers of red
could be seen sleeping,
now when the cruel songs fade.
The only time we could kill,
our fear – of the monsters we had become,
our fear – of friends we had come to yearn.
In the silent hour,
in our every moment of relief
all we did was kill,
all did was bury.
We did whatever we could
to hide the the crystals
of love and hope
away from all the blood.
We did all we could
so that we could remain
like a dragonfly, remain like a duck,
so that our organs knew kindness,
recognize it easily when touched,
so our remains wouldn’t forget
the feeling of trust
even as we made the new towers
with bones of our friends.

“Folded Softly” – Nayana Nair

.

The broken beings of magic
dance around my fire, my burning,
the vapors of all my homes.
This loss, like all others before,
is taught the eternal shadow of hope,
taught the rules
of all simple games of heart.
Its fingers tearing at the sorrow
are folded softly into the memory
of prayers, secrets, and embraces.
As I count the change I should give back,
as I switch off the lights before lying,
even as I learn to bandage all kinds of hurt,
the dance, the folding goes on,
the windows, the portals of light keep getting made
in all the worlds that were once promised deaths.

“Along with Mercy” – Nayana Nair

.

The embroidered shoe sits in the lap of Mercy,
staring at us from across the street.
Our mothers busy weaving pasts out of the fog,
stare through it, willing it out of existence,
wiping the cruel violent words
from the corner of our ears and mouths.
My brother sings the only song he has learnt
-the one about the flowering tree
and the beauty of red, the number of heads lost
in its nostalgic shade. My brother holds in his tiny grip
a coin he found on the bloodied street an year ago.
When the sun dissolves our trees and games,
we come back looking, to witness the reunion
of a small child’s feet with its lost shoes.
We gather around this only marble our country has known,
the memory of a kind dead woman.
We wait along with Mercy for this child
to be formed back from its puddle of shrieks.
Mercy with her her hair braided by the last gods,
with her sad gaze resting on the palace of weapons
on the far shimmering mountain.
Mercy with her soft cheek,
and her hidden tear,
holds some song in her throat,
which we have never been taught.
In her world maybe trees flower better
and children are never lost.
In her language, maybe life is a beautiful word.

“The Dust Sings” – Nayana Nair

.

The window swallows light, the swallows fly
away, from the house now broken.
The walls without ears or swollen corners
of mouth, of places where bones collide perfectly
to cause adequate and explainable hurt.
Acres of skin now without a family line
to hang from, without the skin of another
pinning you down, carving the joy out of our eyes.
We sit, while away our time, as our hearts dry in sun.
Our hearts – dug out, salvaged from their hiding places,
under the floorboards, under the framed report cards,
under the aroma of food, from the palace of delicacies
surrounded by rivers reeking of salt, silent tables,
the nail of memories still sticking
out at random cruel angles,
the harmless metal that never digs in too deep.
The dust sings in the beams of yellow,
a demonstration of a gentle chaos.
“The brownian motion” I tell my mother,
my mother echoes it back
in the voice of knowing,
from this place in the now.
By the hungry window, we take turns
to speak of words that can be now born from our free skins,
words we always knew, but never lied in or hurt for.
As the afternoon brings back color to our flesh,
we realize all the things waiting for us,
the yearnings we can now make space for,
even the shadows taking new meanings, other than fear.

“washed empty” – Nayana Nair

.

my ankle paints the road in dirt, 

	in weeping clouds of red,

from a drowning hill, i hear someone call out,

	a name that could have been mine,

	a word that could have been love

i find this air in me, this broken little word

	pushing me to live, to fix my bones

	to sew my skin, to hold my name 

	in my bleeding tongue.

the brown seeps into my shirt, leaving me shivering with hope. 

	the river, the water out of dams,

	the remains of a home from a far away life.

	the game that ended too soon.

	the letter washed empty.

	i see them surface one by one.

"the sculpture of a sorry life" - i remember the painting

	the celebrated art for the lovers of end.

	how we drew ourselves in the embrace of earth

	with the our flesh buried in mud,

	with our eyes searching the sun

	with happiness growing in patches,

	growing everywhere our skin didn't touch.

“I remember how I loved that 5% more than summer, more than freedom” – Nayana Nair

.

This all is not for your love.
I have learnt to let go of that hope,
heartbreaks and hairline cracks ago.
I have burnt that cold dream
as a joke with my last embers.
I have sat around with my friends
and laughed and felt complete
without having to tell them
anything of you,
of your love for new skin,
the tears it made me shed,
the white walls it has chained me to,
of the pattern of tiled hospital floors
and pain of needles and hopes
entering my body
as they played the song of angels
for the thousandth time on radio,
of the windows that opened up on my face
waiting for some new vision,
now that my eyes were traitor
looking at me like you would,
making me shrink back every time
it held my body in its small shrine
refurnished with the colors and tone
of an up-and-coming blooming prison.
This is already post that field of nightmare.
This is already post-us.
Post-us, the only thing my eyes seek,
my heart cares for and breaks for
is the 5% of you, that hates the remaining you,
as much as I do. The only thing tragic here
is that the best of you will live and die
under your vain violent name. Unlike me
there is no escape for it.

“So I go back to sleep” – Nayana Nair

.

I pull back from his embrace,
taking a breath of the murky light,
trying to hide what it eats out of me.
I see my confusion reflected in his face.
He wakes up again
to see me staring at the window of darkness
that he has become, a cry of a lost animal
painted in red across my skin.
“How are fairies made in the landscape of horror?”
he had asked me three years ago,
from across the stage, while we swept the stage
of the ashes that remained after burning of stars.
“How can anything of magic not be cruel,
once dread and fear is all it gets to grow on?”
“How can anyone know the real skin of hope?”
But what could I say
with my legs knee-deep in the muck of love,
with my hands still trembling
from the emptiness around it,
with my clothed flesh
reliving the the coldness of metal
and the burn of love
in the same language of ache.
I wake up to the broken window
and the winter climbing in,
his hands planting his needs
in my open veins.

“Sometimes folding into oneself seems like an eventual obvious path” – Nayana Nair

.

I fold the answer sheet neatly.
My brain and its urgent ache paused,
the pen now rests, resigning to the winter.
This, now this, feels normal for a January.
Unlike the war-like feelings in these war-free cities
that make no sense, no monster whose presence
we can collectively dance around,
nothing we can dream to get rid of by burning.
I want to think of a dream.
I want to think myself capable and worthy
of holding something beautiful like that in my heart.
But all I can think of is the immense sadness
and the unrelenting reality that I have inherited.
My mind is filled with the images of
the sorrows stained hands of my fading guardians
feeding me hopes,
even as the cold winds took out
every other light in world.
Their hunger, their love, their figure growing small.
How can I not take up arms against my own heart
if only to ease the wrinkles filled with salt
that eats away at the skin of these small gods.
I look at the pen growing cold,
the only weapon and luxury we could afford.
I wonder about the Januaries before me
the time filled with hopeless waiting,
helplessness coloring every sky,
the sieges that went on
till everyone learnt to feel hunger
for things they never wanted to ever feed on.
I think of snow that is yet to arrive.
I find my skin warming up to the ink.
Maybe if I try enough I may get one more answer right,
then all the right answers could probably build me a life
where rest and giving up is a choice.

“We learn new songs” – Nayana Nair

.

The paper starts to chirp
the moment you fold it into a bird.
Clumsily, it flies caged in your hands
and touches my swollen eye
in some fragile consolation.
You place this warm lie in my palm
and it feels as true as the instruments
of cruel cold metal that refuse
to melt in the furnace of any sorrow.
“tomorrow would be a better day”
“tomorrow this sadness will be a bit more light”
“tomorrow new answers will be born”
sings your hidden hope,
sings your broken bird
with its green feathers made of
parabolas and wrongs readings,
its white stomach filled
with graphite games and jokes.
“tomorrow I’ll learn and be better
and mess up in funnier ways”,
I sing to make you smile
when all I want to sing
is your name in repeat.

“this pain doesn’t end, maybe because some things are difficult to give up” – Nayana Nair

.

there is a deathless being breathing

in our hands that never touch,
in the rink where were we slip and break our bodies,

in the soundless forest of decay
where we plant our skin in new nests
waiting for a voice to take form from this mess,

in the canvas where we drew each other’s faces
with so much love that it disfigured what we were,

in the pieces of confetti now colored in mud,
now staining our hands, with a ruined happiness

there is a god of hurt and hope

wrapping its arms around all our ache,
around our shoulders and ribs,

kissing the divinity back into our frames

asking in return only one thing-
that we bury who we are
in silence without a grave.