“You now seem like a story that I made up out of my weakness”- Nayana Nair

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Light drips from the edges of the window
where you once stood, where you now hide,
where now you lie buried without a body.
That light from the past frames my cold figure,
it takes my withered dream and writes your name
on my budding hopes again.
Again I am left wanting you.
On the streets where young blood builds new worlds
my hands want only to build you back as you were.
My ungrateful hands tries to sculpt you
on every skin it is granted.
My cruel cold words of love-not-meant
decorate coffee tables and dark beds.
I have become so hateful that I fail to grasp
how you could have loved me.
It is now impossible to imagine
that once something in me
knew something of love.

“The home I had in me for you, wasn’t much of a home” – Nayana Nair

.

The home I had in me for you
stood in silence at the
the slow curve of every approaching road,
it stood with hope
facing the ocean of molten cold dead ends.
It was a beautiful place really,
a place where sleep hunted for eyes,
if only for some consolation, if only to feel alive.
A place of hollow abundance, where one could only pray
for a bit of loneliness as relief.
Morning dreams of lace and scissors,
the shade of some long lost sorrow,
the memory of rain always remaining on the clothes,
the sunlight forever imprinted on your chest,
the light of the-world-lost always clawing its way
to the dead center of your heart.
It was the world of bleeding fabric,
lying on skin like a pet waiting for a tamed life.
It wasn’t really much of a home,
there really wasn’t much space there left – for life,
for you, or even my changed love-filled self to survive.

“The snow continues to pile as our breath struggles to remember life” – Nayana Nair

.

The walls gave birth to new ghosts
and the chill in our lungs
grew as a garden of hyacinth.
Whatever remained of our suns
was now dying with us.
“Give in to the end with grace”
said a detached cold voice on screen.

So in my remaining breaths
I tried to write something wise about life
but somehow it all came back
to those few names
repeated again and again,
it somehow came back to not wanting to die.

I looked at her across the room
as she ran her fingers through the spread of cards
with a smile that still brushed against my heart
like a butterfly with one wing of metal
and other made of light.
It doesn’t make sense that this all has to end.

Someone out there in the snow
continued to sing about heartbreaks
and the glory of this release
and yet what wouldn’t I give
only to feel another despair of love
if that is how she could live a little more in me.

“The list only grows longer” – Nayana Nair

.

I light lamps, sow seeds of lighthouses
in gratitude for this weak flesh
that can build itself anew, in spite of the nights
when all the warmth in the world evades it.
I chant the names that don’t belong on my lips
with boundless grace and bitterness and longing
and not die from the memory of having lived.
I sit content and complete
knowing my breaking cannot forever stay in me.
I smile with relief,
knowing nothing would hurt as it should, as it does.
I write another poem of love,
knowing nothing I love will be loved well enough.
I look back at our old odd selves and find the heart to smile
knowing that the list of “beasts and wonders extinct” – only grows longer.

“Once, my heart…”- Nayana Nair

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They set me down softly.
The cloth made of stars and leaves,
laid to rest on my heart.
My heart, once a gaping hungry mouth,
a volcano ready to freeze
all life, all skin that roam and breathe
within its realm. The tyrant helpless ruler
of the subjects that bleed in their sleep
as they murmur their pleas, reciting memories
it can’t bear to listen to.
My heart,
a café lit with dying songs and cheap menu,
a landscape of wrecks well-hidden.
My heart, a sceptic, now sits in a structure of wood,
with its half-written paper
on “questionable power of blood”
sprawled on its desk,
while it waits for the final burning
wearing that one warm worn-down love,
that somehow still breathes.

“Another mistake of the same kind” – Nayana Nair

.

how many times
have we walked like this
on roads far away from our homes
even as the only thing we dreamed of
was the warmth we were leaving behind?

the memory of love
fades slowly with the last light.
how many times have we regretted
not looking back?

how often have we chosen silence
over words that can fix everything?

“The Night Wind” – Nayana Nair

.

The light bulb blooms.
The petals of light, the tungsten
burning red and hot- invites, sings, thinks only
of the memory of wings.
The burning, the bodies and their count,
the trivial data, the remains of feeble lives
pile up only to be blown away by the night wind.
Far way, the plastic chairs rustle like grass,
as everyone leaves with their lips
stained and bleeding with illusions.
In the silence of the backyard,
I alone hear the wings drop like rain.
I look at my own charred and mauled self
and ridiculously, think of love, only of love.
I realize something is truly wrong
with this world that I’m caught in.

“When it all ends, when my eyes close, I would rather not know, not see the end of all that I loved so so dearly” – Nayana Nair

.

The stones are being painted black
with fingers soft and sorrowful,
his hands much more wonderful at this task.

On the cold floor made of moon,
hundreds and thousands of objects
and their color – lay scattered, lie alive and waiting.

Coldly, my hands weigh a glittering plastic star
on the tip of my fingers, willing myself
to be a stranger to my own infancy.

The approaching war is much more harder on him.
He sings to himself, he keeps in his tears
as he creates an apple made of night.

I look at the last drops of red in this world
getting erased. I have some tears saved for this occasion.
I have some words in the memory of fire.

But the air is pregnant with reality and gunpowder,
our fingers bruised with the cry of all colors,
I can’t help but want

my words to be anything but a prayer
for a miracle, a saving,
even if it is only for you.

“I look at you and wonder how much of all this you understand” – Nayana Nair

.

The metal bubbles.
The knives and the rust reach
our softest tissue, our dearest happiness.
My skin, like his, is torn and sewed up.
A new design forced into our veins.
A new love written.
Something old and precious bleeds.
Something soft leaves our hold,
leaves our hands, our dreams cold.
The blessings, the gentle shade,
the sun showers –
all a memory too unreal to be trusted now.
Soon we will speak of love
and not mean each other.

“today’s weather is fashioning a hollow revenge out of my sorrow” – Nayana Nair

.

“all those creatures of rotten wings
that circles above us,
not even waiting for our death,
not even the basic respect for a life
hanging by its broken teeth
on the clothes line of memory
in the unwelcome worrying winds
of this world,
what if we get to them first,
what if we didn’t use our last breath
to remember our love, to seek the god we never bothered
to think about in life, to raise our hands to give forgiveness,
to the ones who are already fighting over our funeral cost, to sit
by the trashcan fishing out and reviewing
our stories, our lives, only to let out a sigh,
always a sigh.
what if we take out the meanest arrow
in our anger filled, no-longer-shaking arms
and shoot them down, not even bothering
with threats and pleadings. what if we end things
with the sky lit in red. what if we end
it all ourselves. without wait. it sounds clean, mean,
and better. better than all the things
we are allowed to do with our last drop of strength.”

“what’s the meanest arrow you’ve got?”