“Something is wrong with our core” – Nayana Nair

.

At my core is a sickness-
something hideous and wanting attention,
always wanting attention,
your attention.

Your attention
is like a net that catches everything of sea
including me, but there is no one there
on that broken boat of your body, to pull you or me
out of these cold waters.

Outside these cold waters
our dreams are running on pavements of romance.
They run on our feet, they smile with our teeth
but then you fold yourself around me
and in a shivering language remind me
that they don’t have our hearts
and maybe that’s why they have been spared our fate.

“I looked for you” – Nayana Nair

.

In the orange forest of drowning suns
I saw your face in the light going out first.
I stood with my empty nets, on a boat, with oars
that won’t budge, won’t sail away from your closing eyes.
I played this only memory I had of you
throughout my journey back.
When my feet found a ground to breathe again,
you had already grown bigger, sadder, scarier,
sorrier presence in my life.

Through my dinner that night,
I thought up names you may have had,
the people you may have loved,
the heartaches you thought would never end.
I thought of how easily things end,
how nothing in our heart
can save our heart from this lonely end.
Were you thankful or sad that you had to know this,
to share this realization
with a stranger made of cold eyes and numb limbs?

That night I looked for your body in every ocean I had in me.
I don’t know what was the point of this search
but I knew I had to do something about you,
that my feet had to walk distances because of you,
that something in me must hurt more than it did now.
That finally I had to die with you,
to know what I don’t know now,
to know even a fraction of your pain.
I was sad and relieved that my need to know you
ended there – with that thought,
with the steps I cannot take.

“Same Season” – Nayana Nair

The tree looked at his friend
through the net of blooming flowers
at his forlorn form,
at the new desert on his skin.
Recalling his own autumn
that is gone and will come again
and wondered what is this friendship,
that makes them smile at each other
even when the same season
decorates one with melting flowers of life
and robs other of all the colors it had.

“Through our hands” – Nayana Nair

Through the the hands that
seem like transparent net,
we see all that we are loosing,
what all just is brushing through us.
Left us in pain for
things, people and feelings
that were never ours, nor will be;
but forever in our sight.
We see all the blessings
that fall through our hands.
And when we are left with
only drops of beautiful ache
born out of love,
we keep what we can.