“Mechanisms” – Nayana Nair

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I have a thing about ends-
I cannot do it,
it has to be done to me.
It must happen.
Things must continue
till they rot and bleed.
First in places where no one can see
and then in places where no one can look away from.
And words must be said – cruel words.
They must be said by someone, but it won’t be me.

I rush up to the jar of those colorful wrong words
and choose first, all the words
that seem like hope but they aren’t,
while purposefully leaving behind
in the hand of others only those words
that seem like rage, but it is not,
it is more of helplessness,
but I do not tell them that.
So now, in my tears they see
the new monsters that they are made of,
the monster I can’t bear to be.

Even as they become problems
that they never wanted to be,
I must remain good, I must remain kind.
I must remain the one that held on.
I must save my illusions at any cost.
I won’t give the excuse of my weakness, of my broken heart,
of the fragile thread from which my existence is suspended,
of how I am already clawed open and torn apart by life,
or how I would rather at the end of it
want someone to hate than to mourn things that died
with all the good parts of me.
Or how I have always loved everything a bit too much.
I won’t give the excuses even I cannot believe in.

I refuse to give up
with spite and with malice even
because how can I ever walk towards any goodness in world again
knowing the feeling of the dying pulse of a miracle under my hands.
I am ready to suffer. I am ready to break every heart including mine.
I am ready to paint this world with monsters and be the evil one
but I refuse to do that killing.

“Half of my Winters” – Nayana Nair

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I wanted to play this winter song
on the brightest day of spring.
Maybe at least in that way
I will be able to mourn for something
that I should have been happy to leave behind.
But the snowflakes in me
drift into the world
and become butterflies of someone else’s heart.
All my songs now belong to sun,
they belong to scent of summer fruits,
they fall as unpredicted rain
on the windows I closed just in time.
Anyway, I had to learn this sooner or later.
How can I keep believing in my own feelings,
on the things that were supposed to never change, never melt
after losing half of my winters to the green winds of change.
As I place all my “old dreams that don’t suit the new me”
away from my reach,
I wonder if the only way to save the dignity of my old sincerity
is to lock it way from my own skeptical, mocking eyes?

“Invisible with every word” – Nayana Nair

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The last stranger at the funeral home
brought in the worst rain of the season,
the coldest wind of the night
along with your last letter.
He leaned against the window
and called up everyone he won’t be able to meet today
looking at me all the while.
As if he knew every word that I was reading.
Probably waiting
to see whether I cry at the same lines that he did.
His eyes look like the ones who have got used
to crying for things that cannot be undone,
for a life that cannot be.
I wondered if he loved you. Maybe he did.
Maybe you knew. I hope you did.
He sat beside me
trying not to grieve more than a mother,
trying not mourn like a lover,
making himself invisible with every word
i read under my tearful breath

“…even when I sat at the dinner table with my brightest smile and deepest hunger, i couldn’t convince me that i needed to exist here.
even the warmest embrace of this world could do nothing but break me. i knew opening my heart could only bring floods and all ends of all kind.
i knew all along of this end. forgive me for pretending otherwise….”

“What have my eyes lost sight of ?” – Nayana Nair

As I sing your praise
I end up recalling
how I used to look at you
as if you could save me.
But now we stare at each other
while my life remains what it is.
I don’t call it a mess now,
to get some sympathy out of you,
to get a miracle out of you.
I don’t call it a blessing
just so that you would know
that I appreciate what you gave me
and hope to get a little bit more.

One song, one hymn after another.
I play at the seams of my skirt.
I pick at the skin that I once was.
“is this how we lose ourselves?”,
I want to ask you.
“is this we become who we are,
by cracking and crumbling invisibly,
the moment to mourn-lost forever,
the innumerable funerals no one grieved at,
is this why growing up is painful for all?”.

Instead of prayers
I come to you with only questions.
Instead of your forgiveness
I end up asking your understanding
for what I have done and what I have become.

“Glimpse” – Nayana Nair

once in a while
we move to the edge
that separates what we are
from what we can be.
we try to look as far as we can
and tell ourselves ‘we don’t want that’.

–

but what is it that we see there?
what is it this we can never ignore?
why are do we find ourselves trying to catch a glimpse of
all that we don’t want to be?

–

my moments at that edge have always brought me tears.
and i never know what my heart hurts for, yearns for, mourns for-
the ‘now’ that can easily be lost?
or the life i can never move towards?