“A beautiful day to finally write your name” – Nayana Nair

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On the broken lines of bold white,
on the burning roads far away from home
I knelt down
in the heap of my skirt made of fairy dust
and disappointments of all kinds.

I found a pretty crack
with space enough to be something of its own
and with a style that you’d agree with.
With my fingertips already crying red
I wrote you name
in the best writing I could.

Your name that couldn’t fit
beside mine, or the scorecards with better marks,
or a business card that was not a part of scam,
or with a number that could for once be reached,
or the nameplate that you kept losing
in the sleepy playgrounds of our eyes.

We missed you.

We missed you.
in the conversations
where we thought only of you
and yet couldn’t speak of you.
We thought of you
always with an ache,
always with a heart that wanted more of you
while wanting to forget the little that we had.

I wrote your name
and ran my fingers over them again.
A kid knelt down beside me
offering me a smile as he took in
a pain he couldn’t understand.
Today, of all days, I was not allowed to smile.

I walked away wondering
if he knew you,
if he now lives in your name,
if he knows someone who wrote like me,
who wrote words that will fit nowhere but here.
Your name could be anybody else’s.
You could have lived like everyone else
and yet…

“Closest” – Nayana Nair

Blue-Peeling-Paint-Stock

The cracking ground I kneeled on for answers
have become riverbeds where I’ll drown,
have become
the reason of my tears,
the reason of my broken voice
that travels along the lines
of the words I mutter
without knowing,
without meaning anything more
than to put my mouth into use.
I scratch the walls of the dreams I once painted
till the petals of colors cover my ground
only to reveal a the nightmare of empty hands.
I hold the petals, the chipped away paint
and feel the closest to my dream,
the closest I will ever be.