“please leave” – Nayana Nair

please leave.
i am so fed up of this love
that only exists in my head.
my heart is a glacier, my skin a floodplain
and yet
i speak of home and family
as if i am filled with warmth till my brim.
what do i know of love?
what do i know of love, to hold you back?
we have held hands long enough,
it is okay to let go now.
how long are you going to nod along?
your phone has been ringing for an eternity,
it is okay to say the goodbye
that you have been swallowing for my sake.
don’t start loving me
for putting your freedom back on your plate.
i just don’t want to see you
die like this because of me.
i am fed up people giving up on themselves
to love someone like me.
so, please leave.

“Last Dream” – Nayana Nair

Last night
I wanted to dream of you
but I couldn’t.
The picture of you
that I had in my mind
was that of the smile
that was never yours,
just a front for the photographs
that you never wanted to be taken.

***

And all I could remember about you was
how you would move noiselessly
through my home, my mind and my memories
with a care that I didn’t have.
How your silent nods
were my greatest assurance.
How your hands were my gloves.
How you enveloped me with your presence
and burned till I forgot the freezing world.
How for a short period of my life
I was glad to be myself,
that I was the one you loved.
I wanted that lost time to be my dream,
to find you in that dream
and to tell you that you are precious to me.
So that the smiles on your photographs become real.
So that I become the reason of your beautiful smiles.

“What I Remember(4)” – Nayana Nair

I tell myself that I have nothing worth saying and that no one wants to listen.
I know this because I have tried to speak my mind
and in best cases I have been told that my mind is not that right,
that the experience that I speak from doesn’t exist for them,
so they will unanimously refuse to acknowledge my narrative.
Or they will smile at me and look down at me.
But I am not their adorable kid who had got her alphabets mixed up.
I am a person equal to them,
and my level of ignorance is equal to them
even if it is not about same things.

***

I am a person equal to them.
I am a person equal to them
I am a person equal to them…
I have to keep repeating it
or else I might just forget.
Maybe I have already started to forget
because these days I speak in small sentences, waiting for affirmative nods.
I find myself reading everything that they will approve of.
I find myself voicing what they want to hear.
I see myself calling myself stupid before they call me one.
I see myself nod understandingly at everything I disagree with.
I hear the arguments inside me against the favorite opinions of everyone
and they stay inside me,
and everyone is happy.

***

“You are too young to know better, to know reality.
You are too girlish to see the world for what it is.
You are too sentimental to speak logically.”
I know the wall of judgement I will run into
if I let myself speak.

***

So you may actually want to listen
and you might not be like others.
But I can’t bring myself to speak about what matters to me.
Cause either I will be wounded at my weakest spot
or I will end up hating you just for being like everyone else
when you ridicule me, interrupt me to correct me
and try to tell me what I should be feeling instead.
I won’t give you a chance
because I can’t take chances with our friendship.
I won’t speak up
because I don’t want to feel more inferior than I already do.

***

“New Fact” – Nayana Nair

All that you don’t know of,
all that I fear
stands behind the door,
waiting for the right time to ring the bell,
to call you out for a moment
so that it can tell you about
the mistake that has been made.
“All-that-you-do-not-know-of-yet”
has brought you someone with deeper love and better heart
and shows her off as they new discovery, the new fact,
discusses with you how to go on about correcting
all the text, all the promises, and all the future plans.
I look at her, looking at you
and I see what I must have looked like
when once I found your door
and was happy to find my rightful place.
While you nod your head along
thinking, considering
how to tell me that I need to get going
that there is not much space for misunderstandings
and no time for crying over what must be done.
Yesterday, I loved you.
Yesterday, you loved me back.
Today, my depth are the new shallow.
Today, you can only give me as much attention as
a passing cloud in the sky.

“Small Cost” – Nayana Nair

I remember nodding along to what you said.
It would have been similar to how I agreed with
everyone who were obviously wrong,
but with you I agreed not for peace
but for happiness-
that I realized can be bought for something
as small as silence.
It sounds less crude when called it consideration,
which is indeed a small cost to pay
when I know that there are many
who do not even get to make that choice.

I could say that love has reduced me to a person
whom I would have pitied ages ago
and probably I was better when all that mattered to me was me
and what I thought and wanted.
I remember passing leaflets of “guide to how to treat me”
to people who reluctantly took it
and probably tossed it on streets
when they were out of my sight.
I should have been offended
but even I can’t remember
half of what was on those paper.

With you,
I know
for what we are,
I probably won’t get what I want
and may accumulate a little more reasons to cry for
when we finally make up our minds.
But if we are here
and if this is how love works
then I should probably try being
hopelessly and blindly being in love
especially because it is you.