“Forgetting” – Nayana Nair

.

Is forgetting something like

descending down the the narrow white steps
and finding myself knee deep
in the coolest spring on the hottest day of year.
An year that I feel I am yet to live,
a temperature that feels a bit too familiar.

Is forgetting something like

looking back at the steps and trying to recall
where I am from, trying to recreate the horrors or happiness
that I am running from,
Wondering if I was actually running.
A part of me begging me to go back,
a part that keeps saying that where I came from
was the only place I ever wanted to belong to.

Is forgetting something like

being brought back to the year,
that I am trying to avoid looking at,
by the receding cold water,
to see my feet run
after the blue shadow, the floating leaves,
the place no summer can reach.

Is forgetting something like

reaching a place
far away from the narrow, broken stairs to past,
but also a place where no springs, no summer exist.
In such a place without symbolisms and signs
I keep finding
another pitiful deity of broken and beautiful hope.

Is forgetting something like

finding faith, loving again, blindly believing.
To close my eyes, to the me that I am now,
just to hear myself running down the stairs,
just to feel the water find my feet again.

“On a morning long gone” – Nayana Nair

On the tapered ends of my lips
when I found your lips nestled near mine,
I asked
“Is this love? Is this your love?”
and you answered “Obviously not.”
So I told my heart to grow up.
Growing up was the only way
not to hurt.

On the spring infested roads,
I found your hand
on my melting waist.

On a nameless cold rainy day,
I found the joy of walking
towards you.

On a morning long gone,
in my graceless fall into the mess of my mind,
I came to knew the strength of your hands.

On the narrow pavements made for one
as I walked behind you
I realized how impossible it is to forget you.

On all such days that I made a point
never to mark on any calendar,
on all the days I tried to forget,
I found the question again and again
“Is this love?”
Again I looked away from you
to avoid hearing the answer
that would hurt a lot more now.

I guess I never grew up
or growing up only deepens my heart,
only makes it worse.

“Wilted dreams of our heart” – Nayana Nair

we keep walking through these roads
lined with trees of wilted dreams,
laden with fruits
of all the happiness that we do not want.

our hearts are narrow cells
capable of far less than we think of,
but always wanting more than what it can hold.
our greed is not a monster,
but a pitiful child who has lost too much,
who refuses to give up anything anymore.

we wait for this child
to stop wanting,
to stop crying,
to stop hiding,
to stop hoping.
we wait for this road to end.
we wait to be abandoned by this child
whom we have let down too many times.

“One More” – Nayana Nair

I return to my unaffected neighborhood.
The success of my efforts to keep them ignorant
vexes me,
their narrow vision,
their inability to see me as I do,
their belief in me, the love they handout to me,
the children that look up at me-
making me feel smaller.

~
I have no option but to run
and once I start running there is no end to it,
there is nowhere I can stop.
Cause everything good in this world
reminds me of the unwanted anomaly I am.
Every dark emotion in face of others
becomes a part of mine.

~
Every day I barter with universe to keep me living,
borrowing time for this body,
one more light for myself.
One more body, one more happiness
(one more me) put to death
once I reach the dead end
that waits for me at the close of each day.

“Co-exist” – Nayana Nair

While the rest of the rooms
were sleeping in cold,
cradling the mere humans
who could only do so much
as to ignore the present,
dreaming of summers,
that which in their deepest heart
they had no much love for either.
But mind has always been
a place to escape to,
when we were not escaping from problems
but from our self.

I sat at
the dark narrow stairs,
that led to nowhere particular,
that were almost always flooded with light.
I was lucky to have had that.
To have a place where
the fresh rays of cold sun
and my warm agitated heart
coud co-exit,
without destroying each other.
I could only do so much
as to forget myself and my life
feel what cold is,
to know I was (un)lucky to have this.
To have so much comforts
that I cannot complain of my pain.
But irrespective of these comforts
I would still rot away.