“Hand-painted walls” – Nayana Nair

.

The answer to your question-
the truth you always ask and wonder about
is there
somewhere inside me.
But inside me are many other things
that I have not been able to find till now.
And I would have probably invited you in
and asked you to help me a bit
if you were not better than me in every sense.
Just saying this makes me feel so cheap.
It makes me the person I am always trying to hide
and inside me things are a bigger mess.
There is a river of hatred and an ocean of guilt,
the walls of past that I paint over and over
but things just keep looking worse.
And though you hope to find a sky of love there,
though you hope to find a true love or a true end,
I would rather not be loved for the possibility of who I can be,
I would rather not be looked at closely,
or loved a bit more than I deserve.
And what I deserve is a piece of cake
that keeps getting smaller and smaller every day;
a cake I dare not eat, or even want .
I am afraid in my shrinking world,
there is no place for you
or anything called truth.

“Days to come” – Nayana Nair

The trees don’t whisper,
don’t console me with lies
that they have heard too many times.
They tell me that this sorrow won’t go away
atleast not without me.
That there will be days I will look at
the empty chair opposite me
and my coffee would taste of tears.
Days when I would wake up
with a blanket of despair over me.
That I will stop at certain words
and certain names,
and feel too broken in this happy world.
That I would stop taking certain roads.
Stop going to certain places.
So that my ache in my chest
won’t eat me up.
There will be day
when I would have given up
on all that I was.
And sure enough
the sorrow went away,
taking away everything we were.