“I let him drive” – Nayana Nair

I roll down my window
hoping for the first time
that I knew how to drive
so that I wouldn’t have a confused witness
to my impulse of moving forward by a mile
and falling down by a heartbeat.

“Is everything alright?”,
he asks me too often.
I don’t bother to calm him down by saying ‘yes’
as I was doing an hour ago.
Nothing I say can now convince him of my normality.
So I let him drive and let myself collapse.
I bury my face in my lap
and breathe better by suffocating myself a little bit more.

He hums a song that reminds me of the love
that now lives in a country I have not seen
in a life that I will always guess inaccurately
with a girl who has a serious case of klemptomania.
Last time I called the stolen one,
I was given a sorry and an address of a better therapist.

I let my ring burn my heart.
I ask the driver to leave me somewhere no one can find me
knowing he will not, he will take me home
just like he doesn’t everyday,
and he will make sure to greet me
with a kind forgetfulness the next morning.

I wish I had kept more strangers like him in my life,
someone who would worry 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.