“Hello?” – Nayana Nair

hello?
can you help me?
can you tell me which way to go,
which part of me to burn
to reach the dumping ground
where lay all the skins
that humans have ever shed?

i have been living in my dreams
for quite some time,
where i am the old-me
surrounded by my old-family,
old-friends, old-strangers.

dreams that i can no longer have,
now that i have been led back to reality,
now that i am almost sane.
i realize i am missing the life that never was.
medicated consciousness is not enough
to make me forget
all that i should not remember.

i have heard that here i would find
the lifeless skin of mine-
the ‘me’ who never knew what lacking is.
want to join me?
never mind.
i was not looking for company anyway.
thank you for not helping,
for telling me to grow up.
thank you for making reality
more disturbing than it already is for me.

“Aimless Insects” – Nayana Nair

A last chance again brushes past me
and a list gathers in me like aimless insects
gathering around their last light.
They talk to each other
about all the things that they had hoped
they would find by now.
One by one tears fill up in the eyes
of every wish,
when one of them says that
it spends its days
marking a good day on calendar
to end everything.
That every star it joins
on the worksheet of night sky
spells out the name of the one
that could have been its answer.
It feels sad because
everytime it is a new name
and sometimes a name that it doesn’t remember.
It hurts that the name it can cry for
is not one but many.
It hurts more that to think
that in that one forgotten name
maybe lies the memory of a day
that should never have been forgotten.