“All the boxes are checked” – Nayana Nair

It hurts a bit more naturally
and less violently,
now that betrayal has a range,
has not one but many faces.
Now I need not figure what I did wrong.

All the boxes are checked:

family, family, friends, not friends,
thank-god-we-were-never-friends friends,
i-am-sad-i-stood-up-for-you friends,
people who marked my skin with their name
to own me
while i slept in their arms
(another golden cup added to collection of people hard to get,
people who won’t die if thrown away or left alone)
loves whom i am tied to,
the ones who demand smile and sometimes a bit more,
always a bit more.

They know the feel of my hand and love how it heals.
They hold my hand in their sleep
in their nightmares, in the storms of passion
that they need a person to aim at.
They break my wrist
in my nighmares, in my awareness of my fruitless love.
When I am at verge of crying,
they tell me to not give them a hard time
and to act like the refuge that I am supposed to be.

So I tell them “I love you”
and this lie hurts a little less everyday
as my heart becomes the stone pedestal
all my loves stand on.

“but love…” – Nayana Nair

but love
the i cannot see you
without this night,
for you are not my sun
but only it’s reminder.

but love
i can be the person you love
only as long as you love be back,
as long as my heart wants to forget the past
and the owner of my heart.

but love
in your glory
i always fall short.
i yearn to love someone like me,
someone who plans the escape route
while uttering the words
of half-hearted embellished confession.

but love
i don’t want to be healed
my scars are my name
that i fear to lose
as much as i fear losing you

but love
as much as you want me
you should learn to hate me more
your benefit of doubt is wasted on me
as is your love.

but love
i have so many reasons
and so many feelings
that are at war with each other-
a war that i wish you’d win somehow.

but love
i do love you
in some conditional yet selfless way,
there is a sincerity in my love-
a sincerity that won’t do your heart any good.

“I love you (probably)” – Nayana Nair

I wish falling for you was easier
but it isn’t, it could never be
that is not how you like it-
easy love goes only as far as that
and maybe that is why I loved you.
Or maybe that’s what I tell myself.
Everything I tell myself is a whisper,
a secret from you.
I tell myself stories of a ‘you’
that probably never existed.
I hope you never get to hear them,
for now even my sacrifices feel like betrayals.
I am afraid, till the end
my heart would only be able to love the fiction of you.
I am afraid, till the end
you would remain unloved.
Even when you don’t deserve to be.
That hurts me more than knowing that
even I cannot be truly loved by you.

The Scale of 1 to 10 (part 3)” – Nayana Nair

#the right time to answer the door

The doorbell has been ringing for hours.
I wish I could say it was annoying. But it is not.
A part of me is happy to know that you are out there. That you know that sooner or later I would answer this door.
It has been long since anyone has deemed me good enough to take trouble for, to wait for.
Is that good enough reason to say yes. Does that mean that I love you back?

    "Each and every one of your actions
     Puts me up and down
     I’m not someone who smiles this much
     Looking back
     I suffered a lot because of you too
     But each and every one of those things
     I don’t hate it"
     - "I love You", Akdong Musician

On days like these, I put on the music at the highest volume. To get rid of this awareness of another heart counting on mine.
But today I am afraid to do something like that. I am afraid to disappoint you. I don’t want you to think I am avoiding you. Even though I probably am.
I want to hear your every knock, I want to see how my heart beats as I sit here afraid of the moment you give up and stop.
I feel guilty of what they call “playing games”? But you know that is not who I am.

    "I hate to make it obvious to you
     I am more accustomed to endure this alone
     please understand me"
     -"Lonely", Jonghyun

    "Oh they say love is for the loving
     Without love maybe nothing is real
     So am I loveless or do I just love less"
     -"Home", Passenger

    "Even when I stare at something
     Even as I blink like the windscreen wipers
     I wanted to continue holding on"
     -"Rain Bird", Code Kunst

You want answers that I do not have.
And I have never let you leave empty-handed. Even when you came to me on rainy days with only sorrow, I have held onto you, I have tried my best to keep you together.
But this, this love, this is something too difficult for me.
It is a question that I cannot answer honestly. No matter how hard I try.

    "Stories of ours of our closeness,
     aren't any less.
     So many times I have turned
     my mornings into evenings sitting in your presence."
     -"Channa Mereya", Arjit Singh

    "If I told you with a crying face that I am having a difficult time
     would it be better?
     So who's going to have a harder time? If I whine about being in pain
     will everything be okay?"
     -"Lonely", Jonghyun

    "Right now the time is wrong
     I've been writing these songs 'bout how I can't be with you"
     -"Monster", Henry

I want to hang on to a future, any future with you. But should I say things I do not mean to keep you here with me.
Should I keep bringing you flowers that I cannot keep alive?
I may have helped you live for a while.
But I am not the one who heals. I am not the one who understands. I am the one who eventually fails at being the person I am loved for.

    "I don't believe in shootin' stars
     But made a wish and here we are
     But what if we're not meant to be?
     What if dreams aren't meant for dreams?"
     -"be", Gnash

    "You’ll hate me, you’ll go crazy
     You’ll regret, saying you shouldn’t have met me"
     -"Be Well", Sechskies

    "At times I'm disappointed with myself
     Honestly, I trample myself (trample myself)
     "Do you only amount to this?""
     -"uhgood", RM

I am at loss for words, not because I don’t need your love. But because I never expected it.
I am hiding not because I am afraid of opening my heart. I am hiding, because my love is and has always been about thinking for you. To think what is best for you.
Love sometimes becomes a synonym for giving up. I am not stupid enough to think that we are a better than that fate.
I am afraid as I am not sure what you’d have to give up for choosing me.

    "Yesterday, I was awkward
     Today, I’m lost
     It wasn’t an easy day
     The world I used to live in
     And the temperature of today are so different"
     -"I Pray", Motte

    "There’s no such thing as beautiful goodbyes"
     -"Outro:Tear", BTS

My past has become my brokenness. Your past lives on as your vulnerability. I want an answer that doesn’t break us anymore.
But I am reluctant to ask around for the answers I don’t know.
I am reluctant to learn the causes of the ship that sank down in the best promising weather. I do not want to find your reasons or my answers in the words of friends or strangers who only talk of giving up or settle down.
I don’t want the answer that our fear of loneliness dictates.

    "In this love abandoned Autumn
     We'll go raking up the leaves, yeah
     The leaves that leaves that have fallen
     From these cold and dying trees
     In our hearts"
     -"Bloodstains", Passenger

    "You’re like a flower petal, waiting to fall
     You’re like a numb person
     Walking towards the edge of a cliff
     The longing image of you
     Smears over me"
     -"Almost there", VIXX

    "I don't know what I should do.
     My heart is crashing down."
     -"Wa-r-r", Colde

I am waiting for the right time and right heart to answer your feelings with the sincerity it deserves.
I am sorry that my sincerity comes with wait, hurt, and misunderstandings.

    "When I see you so tired, 
     to you
     am I a burden perhaps? Am I too much for you?"
     -"Lonely", Jonghyun

    "My eyes were shimmering with tears, 
     however, in my heart, I remained warm
     Firmly you told me, again and again you told me,
     how much you loved me."
     -"The moment", Aaron Yan

“A Dull Reflection of Hope” – Nayana Nair

In a dull handheld mirror
that had yet to be broken,
I looked at myself
and realized
that someone is dying inside me.

I didn’t know how to accept this,
so I solved every question in my math textbook.
I learned to eat more and sleep late.
Stared at my wrist for hours.
Pretended to sleep fearing questions.
Tried a bit of every sin
and waited around to be damned.

I felt a constant urge to break someone
so this world could be little less happier.
But death claimed my heart
before I could do that.
So now I write “love” on your tongue
without knowing what it means.

“Weekend Friend” – Nayana Nair

I tell my friends
that “i’ll probably die with loneliness.”
They smile and reply “me too”.
I wish I had told them “i love you” instead.

“seine” – Nayana Nair

Sit here and cry your eyes out.
I know you don’t want to look weak,
that you don’t want my strength
to be the only things that keeps you standing.
But if only you would cry,
if only you would let your weakness show,
I could find in myself the courage
to let you see my tears as well.

This love of mine, it is not much I know.
It cannot do anything.
It cannot stop you from closing your eyes on me.
It cannot do anything but suffer
thinking of the day you heart will forget to beat.
It terrifies me, to think you are already half gone,
that I will get to see the years that you won’t.

I want to tell you that I love you.
I want to hear back the same words, I guess.
But these words, they refuse to come out of me.
I only want to remember the moments
when you said you hated me.
I want to believe that even in this pain
your heart will be lighter
by leaving me behind.

the lights rush past us
the river drowns our image
this air that i can’t breathe
this life you can’t live
your hand that i can’t leave
all make me cry
how did i turn out to be this pitiful?

“Hint” – Nayana Nair

Once I could call you,
call your name
without reason ,
without the anxiousness
that now haunts me
when the phone keeps ringing
or when you stay silent
as you wait for me to take the hint.

-oOo-

I am afraid of bringing up my own name in front of you.
I am afraid to talk about your absence.
I am afraid to hold your hand.
I am afraid of saying ‘I love you’ first.

-oOo-

I keep hoping
that you must have reasons
that have clouded your eyes
and numbed your feelings,
that you are looking
for a way to keep us together.
I keep hoping
even when I shouldn’t.

“Won’t you?”- Nayana Nair

I have nothing to talk to you,

my friend.

I have hundred things that make me cry at this moment.

There are moments in my life that fill me with joy,

that makes my life seem worth living,

that you do not know of .

But I have nothing to say to you.

You are still my friend,

but I feel we exist in different world.

My world consists of only me.

And your world has no place

for the silence that I speak in.

But I can’t tell you that.

I don’t want to lose you.

You may not know me now.

I may not know you too.

We are holding he hands of our past selves.

But you know it already,

don’t you?

But love me still, like I love you.

Won’t you?