“changing light bulbs” – Nayana Nair

.

this tiny sun,
this lovely creation
how it shines, and how it dies.
it flickers like a dying trapped firefly.
it raises a lightning on our pages
that we have spread out to dream on.
we pull and drag a tiny sleeping tree
that we never sit on
and find a way to rests it against the sky-
this sky that is almost always falling down.
i climb without looking back
for i know you are holding my ground.
as another cloud rushes past my cheeks,
as i pluck another proof of death ,
i feel your fingers lingering on my ankles.
i feel the first storm of spring in my mind.
i look down at you and smile
and you smile back
as you take the dead orb
and sad prophesies from my hands
and hand me a new sun,
the one that you brought on your way back from work
just because you saw me look at the fading light with worry last night.
my tiny sun, how can you love me like that?
you look at me and give a tiny clap
the moment i am done placing the sun back in the sky,
you look at me as if i invented life.
even if you are mistaken,
it is beautiful though
to see you wearing your silly delicate beliefs
only for me to see.

“What I Remember (29)” – Nayana Nair

At a bus stand in front of mall (that I have never been to)
I learnt how to wait and how to live with disappointments
without making a big deal of it.

In the bracket of an hour, I grew smaller than I ever thought I could be.
“this is what love does to you, this is what love does to all of us”, all the voices in me lied.
I was again weary of the love that I had chosen and the person I had trusted
(“again” – the word that showed me the real reason why it would never work out).

I stood beside strangers on the crowded bus stand, awkwardly crying.
I counted these not-so-scary strangers who were trying to become one skin.
I pretended that I hated to be rained on as much as they did.
I pretended that I didn’t mind their warmth, that my suspicious mind was not at work again.

Hours went by, empty roads faithfully stayed empty.
I became more aware of the boundaries of my body
I became aware of the person who would never come looking for me,
who would look at the three hour long rain and still won’t wonder what happened to me.

We all stood there,
pretending to be the only human
in the group of zombies who had taken over a bus stand out of boredom,
who stared at the wide road, the darkness beyond, and the emptiness behind
as if their eyes were made to witness only this moment.
I closed my eyes and hummed something, anything
that could drown the presence of everyone
who knew the sound of my breaking heart now.

At a bus stand, that could protect no one,
we all dreamt of the worst- of the submerged road,
a rain that will never stop, the cold that would take us down for days,
children forever waiting, of the lightning we could hear but not see

of a love painlessly ending and a heart that shamelessly survived.

“name my heart” – Nayana Nair

i draw a white light
on another perfect window
with my broken hand

the clouds have gathered
for me
my blue stream must be dying inside

i speak my softest tongue
i lift my wounds
to show my untainted heart

stay on the waves in my eyes
touch the only vein in my body
that knows how to hope, i beg

but they drift away
before i name my heart after them
they drift away not wanting to be mine

the sky is clear again
i try not to cry, as i draw the lightning
that no clouds can gift my heart.

“Scroll” – Nayana Nair

I scrolled through
and then scrolled back again.
I did this too many times
comparing each picture with another.
I knew I would not remember even one of them
and probably edit out
all uncomfortable and evident pain
but carry only the image I could see in all.
That all who were struck by lightning
carried that lightning on their skin
but the skin remembers only the darkness of that hour.
Sometimes it felt I am looking at an unlucky individual
picked out by nature to brand the helplessness of our species.
Sometimes I was in awe of the life that refused to leave the heart
even when it stopped,
even when the brightest death called for it.
But I knew that it was one beauty I do not envy
and I don’t want to be in their shoes.
I probably wanted to remember proofs
of when human and nature were
at their weakest and their worst
and how magnificent the scars of it are
to the eyes of a person like me
who was not there to suffer.