“A pointless rebellion” – Nayana Nair

.

I dreamt today
of being in love.

Even when I woke,
I toyed with that idea.

This thought
that there can be something
that can touch my heart
after you

seemed so ridiculous
that I knew I would be smiling
for the whole day.

That even if I won’t take your name,
just as I had promised myself,
you image would still swim on my lips.

To everyone, to even myself,
who claimed that forgetting is so so easy
this seems like a such a pointless rebellion –
this smile,
that won’t die.

My life runs from one day to other
holding the hand of your thoughts.
Such a let down this is-
to bury you and see this tree grow

that keeps singing your name, your meaning
in languages I haven’t learnt
and I sing along not knowing
that I am learning you again from scratch.
I am loving you again.

“At the end of this list” – Nayana Nair

.

I tried being cool about it.
I tried not to call it a heartbreak.
I tried forgiving.
I tried thinking ‘my life is not over’.
I even invented some feelings that can be talked about.
I entertained the stupid idea – “it’s all for the best”.
I fed it all I owned,
and soon I didn’t have much left to keep that play going.
I think there are still hundred things more
that I have not yet tried.
Maybe one of them would work.

Or maybe till I reach the end of this list,
I would probably forget
who I was or who you were,
and maybe you would just melt into my identity –
claiming 2% of my faults, causing 25% of my breakdowns,
the major reason for my suspiciousness,
the only reason I can’t seem to be myself.
Just like how I pick up all odd habits and mannerism
from people I don’t even recall,
will you end up
becoming things that I do without reason,
becoming my convenient excuse for turning my back
on anything that can become
more important that me in my own life.

“Digestible” – Nayana Nair

to be human is to float like a single cell life
devouring pieces of digestible meaning,
splitting and cutting oneself without blood loss
into something more manageable.
to be human is to lose your legs
to the ideas of nation, families, and lovers.
to be a human like me is to look at
herbivores, carnivores, omnivores, scavengers…
and wonder what hunger feels like.
it is to order love at every other restaurant
waiting for the taste of pain to grow on me,
while i mimic strangers stranded on far away tables
and hope what i am learning is not another dead language.

“and one day i stopped without wanting to” – Nayana Nair

i am a girl who reads too much between lines, especially yours.
and your words, they were cold
but they were warmer than the pages they were written on.
and since i wanted to love you
i tried to see your world as one big adventure
even when my heart was filled with fear.
i tried to do things that might make you happy,
to say the words that might put you at ease.
though i suffered greatly,
being with you made up for everything,
or so i thought.
but in the hope to be loved
i bent a little too much
forgot where to stop,
i went overboard with the idea of sacrifices and promises
and forgot to look at the blood and life i had lost.

“one day he would grow up,
one day he would realize,
one day his love for me, would actually feel like love“-
were the words i lived by.
but isn’t it pathetic
that even when i have no use for these words,
even my soul is more sore than alone,
at night when i count the pieces of me,
and the numbers just won’t add up,
the thing that i am most sad about is that
i was so easy to love
and yet you couldn’t.

“Don’t tell me” – Nayana Nair

Unlike your descriptions,
the green doesn’t wait for the sun.
It doesn’t know what waiting is,
what the word ‘sun’ is, it doesn’t even know
that you are the its spokesperson.

I am not coming at your throat dear,
it’s just that
I feel, as time passes
that you see me more as that green
than your woman.

You cut my sentences
and give me used bottles of perfumes, of love
that I must wear.
The only thing you tell me about your day
is how women dote on you
and place you first in the list of men to seduce.

I remember I once said,
“please don’t tell me, i don’t want to know”
and you glared back,
lectured me on openness and honesty and strength of love.

“i don’t want to know”
I said it only once,
because my I was afraid to say it ever again.
And in my unreasonable fear, I understood
that in this life of pretend, I had also begun
to see you as another sun,
even when you are not.

So, I am not coming at your throat dear.
I am try to free myself from your hold,
from your twisted idea of love,
that is messing with my mind now.
I am someone without you as well,
and I don’t want to be convinced that I am not.

“Redefining my Happiness” – Nayana Nair

so as the last effort to rescue me
they came in,
dressed in the ultimate cool lifestyle.

they handed me all the tools that i might need
to break away from the ‘sad’ in me.
they filled me up with clocks that told the wrong time,
told me that i would get used to the thrill of it.

told me to scrape down
whatever stands in my way to happiness.
told me my happiness should now be
keeping an eye on the better guy, the better job,
better photos on social media to highlight the same,
weekends in lightless room with strangers.

when i became nauseous from too much change,
when i ran into the fire
to save the idea i had of myself,
they held me back,
told me i would develop a taste for such things
i just needed some help, some influence,
some liquid courage, some castles of smoke,
guts to throw away everything that doesn’t serve a purpose.
they told me to talk like the ones who hurt me
and to call it empowerment.

“It is fine if you don’t understand” – Nayana Nair

Being here
and seeing,
allowing this world
to enter your mind
is an isolating experience.

Only I can know
how something enters my mind,
how my mind cannot make sense of it,
how I close my eyes to new light,
how I give up
and let this experience take over me.

We can look at a flower together.
But only I can know
what it means
to look at this flower as me.

I can show you my playlist,
I can tell you the quotes that stay with me,
I can even give you my heart.
But at the end
all I see,
all I feel
can be only felt by me.

“What I Remember (13)” – Nayana Nair

i did all that i must do
and now no one asks me what’s next.
thankfully,
no one burdens me with with their dreams anymore.
i am no longer a possible candidate for the worst,
for taking over the misfortune of my mother’s life.
i no longer have to worry about hurting my parents by
being like them or living like them.
thankfully,
what bothers me, what eats me up
is nothing that would keep anyone else awake
and that is important.

in spite of this emptiness i write about
and this loneliness that seems bigger than this world,
all this do not stop me
from laughing at jokes, craving for food that i shouldn’t eat,
dreaming of another broken love with my only lover,
from having a good time – that i will conveniently forget.
nothing i cry about, no ailing that lives in me
is too large to stop me from living.

i guess i carry an instability in my genes.
if my eyes are in the color of sadness,
i guess i got it from my parents.
and they are lovely people who somehow raised me right
in spite of having a tendency to mess up things
and their sadness with life.

tomorrow i will probably hate them frequently again
but they will nag at me when i reach home drenched in rain,
will tell me sit straight and force me to eat what will keep me alive,
will ask me to keep my phone down,
and sleep a little bit more.

they will not ask what’s wrong and that will disappoint me,
but they will let me do what i want to do (sometimes)
and they will try their best not to wrong me.
they will wish for my happiness,
even if they have no idea what makes me happy
and that is important.

because though i lived my extended teenage
believing that i had no one,
but it was not true.
i saw no one
and it is my fault.
even when i thought i was not loved
they have loved me silently.
though it was a tiring love,
it knew no end.

“What I Remember(6)” – Nayana Nair

I am writing this poem
because for an hour my mind is butchering
every beautiful thing in the world
to get that one line that can finish the thirst of this page.
And nothing beautiful remains beautiful
when such desperate hands
hack at it, cut it into grotesque chunks
and then fail terribly when trying to stuff them
into these mascots figures, these alphabets.
I call this a poem
because I can call it nothing else.
I call this a poem
because years ago a naive me
reached the conclusion
that the only way
a moment can live on,
a feeling can be recorded,
without the burden of the reason of its existence
is if it becomes a poem
and because the current me
doesn’t know how to deal with myself,
the current me knows nothing but to write,
and has nothing of substance that moves it’s heart.
And I fear myself
for the ease with which I refer to myself as ‘it’,
only because I became useless for few minutes.
I end up documenting my fear
of becoming empty,
of becoming blind,
and calling it a poem.
I end up felling helpless in newer ways
and I am forced to call it a new beginning
because giving every sorrow a beautiful name
is all that I capable of.

“Absolutes” – Nayana Nair

From my grip I lose
yet another word-
now alien to my lips and life.
From the corner of my eyes,
I watch it die the same death as me.
Now the stories I told myself have become
a little more unreasonable,
when the words and ideas that
I took as absolute
turned out to be just shape-shifting feelings,
the echoes of my lives I could have had.
Is it possible for a voice to be a mirage?
Can it sound more real
than the world trying to get rid of it
Could it be that my hands,
my eyes were always empty?
Or were they just filled with wanting,
a wanting only for things that cannot be obtained,
that cannot be denied,
for they do not exist?