“Love can only be a safe haven, if we keep this distance” – Nayana Nair

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There is a kind of spell
that doesn’t let love sink into my heart.
It keeps it all suspended
between the layers
of admiration and disbelief,
of trust and that nagging doubt
that I don’t really want to think about.

Like so many, I also believed
that this love-
the shining weakness of my heart,
is safe in the growing cavity of my chest.
That, if the world doesn’t touch me
and I do my part, and never reach out
as well,
then this will be my own small forever.

It will never be hollow
till I don’t test its reality.
It will okay, till I endure
the mocking laughter in my mind
and never think about anything else.
After all, how can I lose a feeling of my making
in a world where only I exist.

But in a world where only I exist
there is also nothing to distract me,
nothing to make me forget the imaginary nature
of my meaning,
nothing else can prevent the ripping apart,
nothing to support the falling structures.
And as I guessed, as I always knew
without ever wanting to admit –
it is just one another thing
incapable of being an eternal something.

This afterimage of another soul
that I try to indulge in,
couldn’t have been anything more than this anyway.
From here, this distance,
from where I can be seen favorably and loved deeply,
this distance
where I can summon in me the spirit of sacrifice
for the idea of this one pure love that I must protect at all cost,
this distance
that gives me a chance at love.

This distance also means
that love never touches
the rocks that my tears have turned into.
It also means that
in hiding everything vicious,
I have also hidden everything that could be me.

Somehow I have learnt to be okay with the fact
that this smile that I get, the kindness I receive
is because the weed that grows on me looks more beautiful
than I can ever be.
I have already dissolved in the earth
to sustain this beautiful face that I am determined
to be remembered for.
It is too late for sincerity.
Now even my hopes have been poisoned.

“For this hell keeps me from breaking for bigger and worse questions” – Nayana Nair

.

“We must break our bones and lives
to create another spark –
this is what we owe to this world”
the voice on other side of my dear old wall
told me, told us all again.
And because we must do something about it,
we kept ordering another heart, another mindset,
another way, another “desperate somehow”
till our hands never felt comfortable with anything that is not new.
Would we stop, could we stop
if someone told us
that we are more than our failures?
I wonder even if I could believe those words
I wonder if such words mean much in this world.

Even if there was another place
to start a life that doesn’t run over me every morning
on the tracks that keep changing their shape and place,
tracks where I am just a new layer of metal, another layer of blood
that won’t give up, that cannot die yet,
saying hello to the ones who wake up beside me
as if death is another sleep for which they cannot lose time.
Even in that place, I feel I would suffer trying to define
and find my place even if no one asks me to.

“Born Like This” – Nayana Nair

“i was born like this”, I lie,
when I really want to say

“the normal ones, the sane ones
are surprisingly excellent at
breaking anyone without any guilt whatsoever.

i no longer have strength
to leave them, or beg them,
or handle the repercussion of wanting them.

i fear them only when i cry
though i am not exactly sure why it should be so.

the positivity, the kindness, the unity, the charity, the world peace
that they talk about
looks so beautiful when put in action
for example,
there are holes in me though i have never seen a bullet in my life
and i am not allowed to say it is their doing
“it is a result of my negative thinking and bad karma” i parrot
like i have been taught to.

this burnt skin, this distrustful heart,
the layers of clothes that are prerequisite of proving my modesty
if god-forbid i let loose an animal in someone just because i exist,
the logs of missed calls and blocked calls and blocked memories
that are the only things protecting me now.
this is how i was born.“

Though absurd, it sounds like truth the more I say it.
This is how I hurt whatever is left of my heart.

“feelings suspended in the void of my heart” – Nayana Nair

Everything you do,
everything I say
is suspended in the layers
of admiration and disbelief.
What I feel lies somewhere between
“the love that is” and “the love that cannot be”.
This place,
where my uncertain feelings live,
here you will find my many graves
and here I will die again.
Not because your love can’t save me,
but because I doubt every heart
that holds me too dear,
I want to run away from this love
that is ready to die with me.

“Poster” – Nayana Nair

I thought I would only have one poster
when I decided to clearly define what I am.
I stuck it up only after careful consideration.
Consideration of the space it takes.
Consideration of the how much I am allowed to grow.
Condsideration for the things that will be hidden away and
lost under the layer of this paper,
which is necessary
maybe only for me.
And soon when my smile changed a bit,
I had to get new poster.
When I could no longer sing along to my favoutite song,
I had to get a new poster.
When my legs became more noticeable than my words,
I had to get a new poster.
When my dreams felt hollow, I had to get a new poster.
But the soon I ran short of space.
Soon the only way to continue seeing myself for what I am
was to cover up what I was once.
To make space for another me
to exist another day.
All this
so that I do not wake up one morning
not knowing who I am.

“My Time” – Nayana Nair

With you my time
doesn’t go forward, doesn’t go back,
doesn’t stop, doesn’t pass.
My time, like yours,
turns around on itself,
again and again,
till it becomes
layers of repeated confessions
warming our hearts.

“Settling dust of memories” – Nayana Nair

My past
bleeds slowly onto my clothes,
onto the furniture,
on the buttons of elevator,
on the currency that leaves my hand,
on the roads I drag myself through everyday.
And they do not get lost
only because they leave my mind.
They are forever in front of my eyes
forming a layer of sadness on my daily life.
So that I do not forget
what all I have lost, what all I have suffered
to reach this point in life
where I can really smile.
I think it is another me,
the one who only knew the worse of world
who fears she will be forgotten,
so she doesn’t want to leave.