“Change Me” – Nayana Nair

the doors, the light falling on us,
the grass that grew by the roads that we walked,
the flowers in our backyard,
everything.
you changed everything.
you filled everything with so much light
and drew every object around you
with such intense colors
that I had to love you.

but you could not change me.

my heart stirred in its sleep
but never wanted to wake up and decide.
i am not dragging you down for what happened.
i am not saying that you were enough.

i am saying that it was your benevolence-

how you never tried to take this fabric of my skin
and sew it something that would fit you,

how you remained the wide blue sky
and how i remained a small disappearing brook,

how my heart felt small to even hold an essence of you,
how i feared to lose you,

how i wanted to lose you for once,
to be free from this fear

that is what drove us apart.

some days i wished for you to fall into me,
to make me something more than i am.
some days i wished i never met you,
never became aware with how small i am.

“Keep me inside” – Nayana Nair

I can help you count everything you have.
These objects have no meaning to me
but I know something about life
even if I don’t know everything.
I know that your hands
will stop shaking
only if they keep counting,
only when you have confirmed
that you have not become poorer
that you were a minute ago.
I know that you don’t enjoy being like this,
even though people say you are weird on purpose.
I know that you have stars on your ceiling,
only because the ones in the sky
have abandoned you too many times.

***

So I will not tell you
how to live your life.
I will not force
the disease of my heart
into yours, in the name of cure.
Build walls all you want,
but keep me inside them with you.

“My Possessions”- Nayana Nair

All objects that I possess
have stopped doing what they were meant to do.
The window doesn’t bring me new air.
The bed doesn’t give me rest.
The glass filled with water and handful of pills
promise me disconnection from reality, sleep, or even death
but never the rest that I so want.
The words on my books run around on pages, hating my gaze.
The music breaks itself into disjointed string on noises.

–

It is as if one night
while I lay trying to forget you,
they voted and decided to forget me unanimously.
They agreed and concluded
that if someone must be forgotten
it is me.
So now they rebel,
they serve only purpose-
to remind me
of all I lost simply by losing you.

“Surrounded by Chatter” – Nayana Nair

With marker I scribble on the mirror
the list of complains I have from you,
not caring if they mess up my own reflection.
Sometimes thankful that under that I can hide my own
obsession with what people will think of me,
how much will they value based on the value you give me.
An obsession I cannot really admit I have.
After all I am supposed to just ask for what I want
and not what everyone tells me I should want and I should have.
But are my wants really immune from the template of dreams
that world sets apart for people like us.

When I sit surrounded by chatter
I remember how I had to seal my lips,
had to come up with stories more acceptable than
the vague transitions of my life and my heart
from one state to another.
Even if I put on songs of love and think of you
I am just presented with all that I am waiting to receive from you.
(Does that make me greedy or calculating?)
But somehow I always bring myself around to the life I must live
that would be easy to live
if I didn’t compare myself to others,
if it was easy to turn your back to the the judging eyes
especially the one being judged is not only you
but also the object of your affection.

How our bodies feel

All of us remember all the ways our bodies have felt small and vulnerable, open to destruction—like they are not ours at all, but objects for which we have to always be on the defensive, apologetic, abstractly and consistently afraid.

– Why I Wanted to Write About Anger, Lynn Steger Strong