“Maybe even then” – Nayana Nair

.

The red birds and blue flowers
are back in our world, it seems.
Again I have become part cloud
and part smile and grief.
I wonder if you woke up
as the light that only knows to cry,
as the indifferent sun again.
A day like this wasn’t supposed to happen,
not now, when we are almost complete by ourselves.
A day on which small impossible love like ours
sings out from nameless graves buried in meters of snow.

I go back to sleep
wanting to forget things that must be done today,
dreading to walk into you,
hoping to walk into you,
knowing that I would love you again,
especially on a day like this where I am too broken,
when I am too much myself.

Days like this make me belief that I would end up with you
no matter what.
That even when I run away, even when I cry because of love,
even then maybe I want only one thing-
to be with you.

“Windows that cannot be closed” – Nayana Nair

.

Slowly I plucked each tooth of mine,
I tore my tongue out
and he called me beautiful.

He called me beautiful
so I left my clothes roll down.
I let my skin, my guards, my skeleton
touch his floor.
I sat there watching him
build a fire out of it all.
The fire was too cold for me
so I didn’t smile.

He told me he only speaks the language of rough,
that his heart beats and falls slower than the rest.
I told him I have known many like him.
I told him I didn’t mind.
He seemed to mind that a bit
but he also seemed to be a bit relieved.

As I sat under the the waterfall
of his blue curtains,
I felt thousands of eyes
at my back, behind windows that couldn’t be closed.
There were always windows behind my back
anywhere I sat from the day I was first told
that I was the type of beautiful
not worth keeping and staying around.

Those eyes
filled with lust, question, resentment
filled with hatred, filled with violence,
filled with sweet words for my ailing heart,
filled with knives for soft skin, for the right time,
were my burden
so I knew
at least this was not his fault.

I asked him
what he could give, what he could make me forget.
He didn’t answer and seemed a bit lost.
I wondered if he also couldn’t think or speak clearly,
if there were eyes on his back
that he never spoke about.

“Not So Bad” – Nayana Nair

he sings the most beautiful song.
so beautiful
that the sky becomes a reflection of the heart
that he can barely carry in himself.
the words on his lips
they break, they sound different,
feel different,
they sound like the first cry of a baby-
the violent coming to life.
they run and collide and shatter
against the rough indifferent surface
of this dying world, a not-so-bad world.
he becomes a not-so-bad singer.
as he runs out of breath and love
someone places a coin of gold in his hands.
he means to feel grateful for this compensation,
but all he can do is hold his tongue, hold his tears.
hold his bitterness in himself
and sing another song dreaming, waiting
for an honest reply, a genuine care,
an understanding gaze in return for laying bare his humanness.

“that’s so us” – Nayana Nair

the rains of these kind
that starts with loss and longing
that won’t slow down
won’t shut up
these rains are so much like me
so much like you
indifferent and cruel
i have found another song today
that somehow floats
above the static of this world
i have found another shelter
that fools me into believing
that my sadness is something i can run from
that we will stop belonging to each other
just because we decided to

“What I Remember (17)” – Nayana Nair

those who spent their lives
wrecking their hands to mould me into something better,
tried fruitlessly
to break me without pain,
to break me and make me into something
that would be accepted by this world.
they showered me with love
so i won’t know, won’t remember
how much it pained me or how much it hurt them
to have gifted me
this painful self-critical view of myself and this world.

while they are growing old, weak and distant
my love for them looks like a failed seed
that never grew nor flowered.
the years that i spent with them
has made me ungrateful.
i have become the fish that never thanked the water
that kept it alive,
thinking that is what water is meant to do.

with time
as a fail to become what i thought i am,
as i realize that doing or even knowing the right thing to do
becomes more impossible as you get to know this world,
i begin to understand the enormous love they must have had for me
to hold my hand and walk with me in a world
that they had never seen
only for my sake,
knowing that their courage and their tears
are destined to be forgotten (or worse- questioned).

and my love?
my love,
it grows in opposite direction of sun,
my love for them grows into the soil my heart
in a world where they won’t see and won’t know.
i will remain cruel and indifferent even in my own eyes.
so i hide my muddled feelings
and walk around those
who have made me what i am
whatever that may be.

“Fictional Friends” – Nayana Nair

i break another glass today,
the girl with blue highlights in her hair
walks over it without bleeding
but tells me
not to try such things at home on my own,
that it took her years of invisibility
to even try such tricks.
but she has no suggestions for what else i should do
instead of breaking my smooth skin
and wrecking my good name.
so she tells me a story about a girl and wolf,
another about a girl and her impossible dream,
about a girl and her sad prince,
a girl and the dark world,
a girl and whatever wants to break her down.
she tells me i don’t have to be that girl.
that i just have to be person who happens to be a girl
and not hate herself for it.

---

it is night already.
i find myself in strange blue rooms.
i hold hands with another new stranger
who promises to sing me to sleep.
he walks like heartache that knows how to smile.
he pretends to be the real deal.
he is too drunk on his own sad story like me
to even see anyone else.
so no we are not in love.
i just want to borrow his songs,
his voice, his awareness of all that is wrong.
i look out of his window, at my own home
at my friends, at my love, at broken frame of my family,
at myself who is trying too hard
to be indifferent to it all.

---

the battery of my phone dies
and i am alone again in this life
that i can’t find my way around.
i am somewhat lost, tired,
and yet somehow happy
to have lived through this despair,
through another dark night.

“Indifferent Green” – Nayana Nair

The indifferent green around me
soothes my heart.
It has nothing against me
and I do not have to be wary
of all that it can do,
and all that it can say
to shift the levels
of what is tolerable and
what I should put up with.
I can already hear them saying
that I am hiding.
I can hear them saying worse things.
Do you know what I find scary
that even in hiding, I know what they will say
and I care for what they will think,
even if I don’t care about them,
even if they don’t care about me.

“Rewrite” – Nayana Nair

I could say that you are so far away
that you cannot know what makes me
even if you tried.
For I feel the excuse of distance cannot fill this basket
that would have been essentially filled with the
reasons that are easier to put in mouth
but difficult to wrap our heart around.
Like the words that are often deleted and rewritten
so as not to offend.
And rewritten thousand times
so that they say nothing, mean nothing.
And we are content at the fact
that we could voice something in this world
even if the purpose of these words
was to just to fill up the air, fill up our time.
And the space just widens between us,
not because
there is distance between our heart
(because this wide world was made
for our heart to roam,
so this distance cannot be avoided).
But because I could never let you
rest your head, rest your questions
on the lap of my thoughts.
So that you may know
how my life (just like yours)
simmers under the heat of
indifferent care
that we are all used to receive.

“With Time” – Nayana Nair

I learnt with time
that I could write everything I had in me
and still it would not matter.
No clever lines, no rhymes I think up
can affect the life around me,
where people are indifferent
to what I do , what I say
and especially what I write.
And no matter what I do,
this distance I have from this world,
cannot be bridged my mere words.
And if it can’t be done through words,
I am convinced, it can’t be done at all.

I learnt with time
that everyone is lonely.
But only few are cursed
to remember this fact
every time they wake up
to a morning that
they never look forward to.

Nowhere

“The people of the world run about excitedly as if they

were going to miss the yearly, royal, sacrificial feast,

or as if they were going to be the last one

to climb a high tower on a beautiful spring day.

I alone remain quiet and indifferent.

Unoccupied by worldly cares,

I move forward to nowhere.”

-Lao Tzu