“The Noise of Empty Heart” – Nayana Nair

I close your heart.
I stitch you back
in a same haphazard way
I do almost everything in life.
The same way I knocked down
every clumsy fragile landmark
that could have actually helped me at the end.

From your mouth I have come to know
that my hopes are tied to the throats of my saviors.
That you are disgusted as you see me
sitting on top of sleepless nights
as I help myself with another serving of self-pity
that I won’t be able to digest.
That I laugh a little too long at the every joke
that the world plays on repeat,
all the while the cruel thread that I am
I cut the skin, I cut the voice, I cut the air.

“this what i am, change me in an easy way, see this is how i am hurting, why won’t you look at me when you said you wanted was the real me”

I say as I try to crawl back into the hide of your love.

“i will stitch you back, if i have hurt you. if you want to hear goodbye, i will say it a thousand times. please, please stop crying. please for once hesitate before you ask for the door out. ask for once if it was easy to take in your sorrows, your demons, your cold shoulder. ask for once how i have fared, how i have come this far, how am i letting you go, letting you be, after loving you so badly. “

“Leftover” – Nayana Nair

I do not want to continue this-
to harbor, carry around,
give voice to feelings of sympathy
that can never be more than words.
After I have said all the right things
and you have given the correct response,
we feel we have done everything we can
that a good person must do to save the world,
when we are just protecting the leftover
humanity we have in ourselves,
to wear it like a badge
in conversations that can bring no change.
You, me,
our indulgent families, our fun-loving friends,
our irritating neighbours-
have never stepped out of our own lives
never given up on our comforts
unless it is for accumulating some good karma.
We should not be allowed to feel so generous
for saying so much and doing so little.