“The step before silence” – Nayana Nair

.

The abyss holds a celebration today.
There is a relentless sound
of chatter and song,
of footsteps walking out of sync
heading this way.

This way, this place
where we have always been stuck
a step before the end, a word before silence.
This desolate space,
where we live and breathe
and learn to never rely on lungs or love,
it is a festival here.

The balloons of hope
are learning to fly in this heavier air.
Small innocent hands are sculpting
something better than hell
out of all this fire and light.
So much is possible today.
Anything can be lived.

Today the empty cold sky looks down with envy
at all that should have been unbearable.
Today I look down at myself
and see something lovable in everything
that made my heart crumble once.

“The Scale of 1 to 10 (part 1)” – Nayana Nair

#the feelings that I can’t own

The nature of regrets that I have in my heart, the flowers that grow at the end of this knife, the watches that have run out of battery but pretend to have stopped time. I have so much space in me for things like these. I have so many curiosities that I can put up a shop with no intention to sell.

     I don't like my mind right now
     Stacking up problems that are so unnecessary
     Wish that I could slow things down
     I wanna let go but there's comfort in the panic
     - "Heavy", Linkin Park

     Distant lies - shallow dreams, confused ideas 
     Once our hopes - now they anchor all our fears 
     -"Lie", Arco

     Just by being next to you
     I was happy
     Don’t take even that truth
     And make it into a bad memory
     -"Last Goodbye", Akdong Musician

I have sketches of you, a face for every day that you have shared with me. I wonder if you would walk into this shop with another beloved of yours. Would she buy them all? Would you let me sell it to her?

     I loved you a lot
     Even if you say otherwise
     I didn’t want things to end this easily
     -"Go Away", Yong Jun Hyung

     But the thing that we all learned at some point was how
     To step on someone, to catch them, to erase them, to hate them
     -"Life", RM

This is not a post-you fear and post-abandonment feelings. I think I have felt that with you all along. Something about us, the way everything about us was a secret of sorts – you only told stories that I could never repeat.

     And I cried for you
     Like a widow cries at her lover’s grave
     You haunted me through my stinging nights
     And aching days
     - "Divers & Submarines", Passenger

I knew this all along.
I knew all your lacks, and I knew how you would give up on me rather than give up on all parts of you that stand between us.
I knew it, but I wanted to be wrong, just this once.

     Well I clung to you
     Like cat hair clings to a woollen shirt
     You needed me, like a wedding dress needs dirt
     -"Divers & Submarines", Passenger

     I bet you know just what you're doing
     You're not the type that's used to losing
     First, you build me up, then with just a touch
     Leave me here in ruins
     -"Dazed and Confused", Ruel

I hid from you all the parts of me, that could suffocate you – my love, my possessiveness, my confusion, my fear, my irrational suspicions created by most rational observations, my objections, my complaints, my hurt.

     We wanna be right
     But always wrong
     Were we born to be wrong?
     Is life something like that?
     …
     We tryna be bright
     But always dark
     We still don’t know if we’ve lived to the extent that we can
     -"Life", RM

But now, when I no longer have the obligation to hide anymore.
I end up lying, trying to protect you from the harsh words of this world, making everyone believe that you were lovable even when you were not. It would break my remaining heart for you to be hated, even when you deserve to be hated.

     What happens if I open my eyes, my eyes?
     Will I ever get my head right, head right?
     -"Dazed and Confused", Ruel

     I keep dragging around what's bringing me down
     If I just let go, I'd be set free
     -"Heavy", Linkin Park 

     Until the time that we die perfectly we can’t protect everything
     -"Life", RM

“Thoughtless Scribbles” – Nayana Nair

Do not scribble thoughtlessly
your name on these walls.
Don’t make yourself at home
if you don’t plan to stay.
I am not someone who has learnt to let go
of anything I value.
I am not someone who will close my heart
only because it hurts.
I wear my insanity in glittering colors
and that is how I will be even after I die.

–

So before you take my hand
and tell me the words you have told
to a thousand girls before,
know that though I am not crazy enough
to ruin your life if you leave,
but I am crazy enough to ruin mine
and my misery and my pain
will make your heart bleed.
(I turn out to be pretty lovable
even when I don’t look like it.)

–

There is a reason I don’t speak much.
There is a reason I keep my distance-
it is to save this world from few more sad poems.
I travel from exhilaration to distress, to new deaths
in matter of minutes,
don’t take my hand
if you can’t tag along.

“I am sad, bitter, and in love” – Nayana Nair

I look at you and I see myself.
I see my weakness, that is you.
I see my failure, that is you.
But if I put it like this
it may seem that you are
just another darkness in my life,
but you are not.
There is a reason that even when my mouth recites
sad stories and bitter words about you
my eyes, my heart only looks for you.
There is a kindness in you
a love in you, for me,
that surfaces, even when you try to hide it.

In your imperfections
I see the imperfections of my own love,
how I cannot love all of you
even when I want to.
I wish sometimes
I was not this person that I am.
Sometimes I wish you were a little less lovely,
a little less lovable.
Maybe then it would have been easier,
been okay,
to walk over this love
that I cannot let go of now.

“Muddy Eyes” – Nayana Nair

How much of the sorrow
that floats on the surface of my muddy eyes
are actually the remains from broken bonds?
How much of it
are the soaked and decomposing paper planes of love
that never made it to my heart.
I write down again
all the things I must not forget,
everything that neutralizes my mistakes,
brings them down to the scale of what others have done.
I make it through this life
by remembering only those who told me
that I worthy of love in spite of selfishness.
Conveniently erasing the moments when they were proved wrong,
erasing how I walked over their hearts
when they no longer loved me,
when they saw that I may need love
but won’t be changed by it or for it.

“Lovable Beings” – Nayana Nair

The familiar images of a girl with strength
and a guy with heart
and feelings that can be reasoned.
I found them everywhere in stories
but not in life.
Mostly they were just weak people
who learnt how to live with their heart.
And loved and let themselves be loved
with the faults that they had.
Here
people who were – what they were.
No love or devotion
promising to change them into lovable beings.
Especially when ‘lovable’ was defined
by people who didn’t approve certain lives
and certain love.
And the perfect image of love
and notion of the perfect people who deserved it
made me think of the emotions we cut from our heart.
Leaving us little more empty,
taking us a little more far
from the perfect life that we were told to have.

“Don’t waste your love on me” – Nayana Nair

I have never been someone lovable.
I am far away from territories
of innocence and honesty.
They are not me.
I can try to be
a girl with halo and sweet smile.
But know this, that too
is a scheme and an act.
Don’t ask me for things
I can’t give you.
Don’t ask me for the love you dreamed of.
Don’t ask me for love that I don’t have.
Do not call me and remind me
of what all I am neglecting,
when you cannot see
the loneliness I am suffering
meanwhile.