“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.

“This is my thrashing around. This is my thank you.” – Nayana Nair

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Ice floats and ships sink
but the absolutes end here.
For this red sun, that seems
to sink together with us all,
is just playing a kind game.
It is will be fine. Just fine.
It will pretend to die
just for our sake.
Just like how it pretends to be born
so that we don’t feel alone.

It doesn’t know yet, that we feel lonely
in spite of that. That there are things in life
that can make us forget, that can cancel
the sunshine and the storms. There are soft things
that gets trodden upon,
there is a kindness that we can’t value as humans
because it doesn’t come from the one we want.
There are things with weight and never leave our heart-
Like love, like death, like subjective harshness of this world.
Like the unnamed thing eating our dreams,
Like the unmanned vehicle of luck running over us-
leaving us alive everytime.
The friend who forgets us so often
that we believe that we are ghosts, the rain of care
that we try to predict in the eyes of cold lover,
the floating bodies that we can’t recognize.
But we cry and in our tears we feel the remains
of the memory that we can’t access.
we only feel we must cry or we will regret.

So dear sun
forgive us if we don’t return your smile
as we thrash around breathless in water,
as we demand answers in a voice weathered by tears.
Forgive us if we forget
that unlike us you will probably die alone.
Things get forgotten
important things like you and the other members
of your life-filled-lifeless club.
That’s just how we are
but we realize it sooner or later what they were.

I can recall the days when i knew you tried to save me.
You almost succeeded. You were beautiful
even when my life was not. But even that helps.
Thank you.
We may not say it that much, but we have written a lot about you
in the papers you’ll never read.
I hope when you die the papers that are filled with your beauty
can burn to give you a few more breaths.
I hope it helps even though it won’t.

“Last Kindness” – Nayana Nair

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“You were almost my whole world”, he said,
waiting for me to say something-
an excuse, an apology, a lie that would make him
as important as I seem to be in his words.

His belated words are always beautiful,
his love always drips at the corners of every end
that I try to carve out of us.
Once it was an assurance to know all our ends are fake.

Once I was made of dreams,
once he was made of songs,
and now we are back to being mere flesh
that we can’t accept each other for.

Now we are pretty sure
we can live without dreams that hurt
and that there are other songs, better sounds
that won’t cut us up before we are dead.

Yet he tries to care for the one he no longer wants
as I try to stay silent for his sake, for my sake,
for an end that doesn’t drag on.
Or is it to look pitiful and arrogant in his eyes.
His eyes liked me best when I couldn’t be wavered,
when I seemed something more than just a needy heart.

I wonder why we try to look humans even as we part,
why we must show the faces we have grown to hate ourselves for
and act like lovers in pain, like this is the end of our lives.
When love was the last thing we needed,
seeing it was the only thing we were ever ready to give up on.

“Paintings of springs and fault lines. Sketches of lost mothers.” – Nayana Nair

.

She sings.
An echo, a heartbreak maybe,
something piercing, something invisible,
something not ours-
this is all that we are allowed feel
(as long as we want to feel).

She is everywhere.
She sleeps, buried under the heavy weight
of water and floating globes of life and
drowning boats and oil.
She is everywhere.

Yet her voice outlines every step we take.
Every dying step is a step lost to her name.
Running away is beautiful in this city.
The traces of our writhing, crawling, changing bodies,
painted on every stone, every wall,
doesn’t let us forget the dust of the world
we crushed by our hands,
doesn’t let us forget the word “home”.

All our journeys branch from her heart.
We sit huddled with our feet in water,
with our hands over fires dying out
and talk of her. Always her.

“Greater Good” – Nayana Nair

The trees are alive today.
They ask me to sing them to sleep for the last time.
I sing for hours
but they refuse to close their eyes.

They ask me how I have been,
not waiting for my answer,
in one breath they ask
about the words they don’t understand,
ask me about the days I do not remember anything about
(there are so many days I have no memory of
while I can’t forget the days I really want to forget),
about the rain that has left us long ago.

Their love for this world that they do not understand-
makes me jealous,
makes me wonder,
if I could love also this world as much as I want to
if I knew a little less,
if I gave up this human heart
that knows nothing but to steal and plead,
to take away and bleed.
But if I knew how to give up myself
for my greater good,
I would have done so long ago.

I can only stay selfish,
act better than what I am,
sing songs to the trees
that will soon be killed for my sake.

“Well-being” – Nayana Nair

You ask after my well being
and I answer something along the lines
of what you have heard before,
an affirmation to the answer you want to hear.
You must have heard it enough times
to know it to be false.
You must have heard it enough times
to know that it doesn’t matter.
You have heard it enough
to realize that there is no point in asking
but we must keep up appearances.
Those who are drifting away
and those who are at shore
must act as if they can still see each other,
must act like humans who care deep inside.
And believe that caring deep inside is enough,
that being sad inside is fine.

“Co-exist” – Nayana Nair

While the rest of the rooms
were sleeping in cold,
cradling the mere humans
who could only do so much
as to ignore the present,
dreaming of summers,
that which in their deepest heart
they had no much love for either.
But mind has always been
a place to escape to,
when we were not escaping from problems
but from our self.

I sat at
the dark narrow stairs,
that led to nowhere particular,
that were almost always flooded with light.
I was lucky to have had that.
To have a place where
the fresh rays of cold sun
and my warm agitated heart
coud co-exit,
without destroying each other.
I could only do so much
as to forget myself and my life
feel what cold is,
to know I was (un)lucky to have this.
To have so much comforts
that I cannot complain of my pain.
But irrespective of these comforts
I would still rot away.

“STORY” – Nayana Nair

How proud we should be to be human.

How proud indeed.

How civilized we are, to kill each other when given a chance.

How learned we are, to destroy anything that is different from us.

These pages of history that we have left mark on.

and these pages of today that we read each morning.

They tell a story.

Story of the terrors that we put in each other’s heart.

Of the power we feel at the helplessness of others.

Of how we beat humanity out of ourselves and others.

Of how people survive the crimes, that were once not seen as crimes.

Of being drunk on power and false idea of invincibility.

It is not  a story of prejudices and hatred

fueled by differences; promoted personal gains.

They are not isolated incidents of few insane people.

This is a repeated history of everywhere,

Of people who don’t allow other’s to live a life of dignity.

It is  a story of what we are.

Of how quickly we forget.

How calmly we live,

Knowing, but not caring

About hundreds of lives like ours,

being trampled by someone like us.

We humans. How proud indeed we should be.