“Eventual Fall” – Nayana Nair

She just laughed and said
“you are not really intelligent,
you know that right?”
as she packed her bag,
making space for her only notebook, with difficulty.
I wonder if she really needs all those the things.
She is not a careful person,
I know that because her list of priorities is horizontal-
everything is important, everything is equally dispensable.
I hear a song breaking at the bottom of her lungs,
when she talks of the new thing that she will love forever
when I know she won’t.

She lets me know for my own good “geniuses are not made by effort,
love doesn’t happen by hard work,
quit swimming and struggling when you are on land.”
She takes me by hand, teaching me how to walk,
teaching me her pace.
Her pace unsettles me. She gives cruel names
to my innocent actions as she smiles.
She smiles at me while I wait for my forever to end.
And only because I hate myself
for not wanting to love her sometimes
I smile back.

I wonder how far my determination can take us.
As she finally boards the train home, after missing out on a few,
she says “stop struggling, when i am with you,
i know your heart, even when you don’t.
it hurts to see you like this,
things will eventually fall in their place.”
I wonder if she is pushing herself, within the limits of who she is,
to save something of us, to save something of me.
I wonder how she can love me, if she knows how petty my heart is.
And because I do not know the answers to her,
I wait for us to fall into the places.
I think of her and find it easier, this wait.

“I always fall behind” – Nayana Nair

All the lights that were meant to light the way,
end up looking like spotlights fragmenting the world.
Fragments so beautiful
that I never bothered with moving
towards the place I was meant to go;
that I sit here, saying goodbye to people
who hope to see me wherever they will end up at.

But we won’t be seeing each other.
I let them hope anyway.
That hope makes them smile brighter.
that’s the way I want to remember them,
that’s the way I want to remember this world.

It is not easy though – to love all who love to keep walking
and to love my small place and my small heart
at the same time.
It is easier for everyone – for the one who must stay
and the one who must walk
to think of empty hands as freedom
however hollow it might feel.