“Sunrise on your soft cheeks” – Nayana Nair

.

The ends get broken here.
The land gives away.
I walk forward, asking the sea
what it wants to take from me.
Where should I cut myself,
what part should remove of me
that you would feel like home in me.
How should I hold you
so that you may sleep in peace.
What name shall I call you by?
What sound do you want to answer to?
Ask for whatever can keep you alive
and I will find it for you. I will make myself
into your wishing tree.
The ends break here. The ends cannot exist,
cannot breathe in me.
From my broken land you are born
and from my broken love you shall grow
and find places to breathe in every crack of this world.
Hold out your soft hands
and bless me my-center-of-universe,
smile at me my little god.
I need only that, only your existence
to know of peace.

“you are lovely” – Nayana Nair

“you are lovely”

“you make me forget the unpleasantness of my life.
so i will call this love.
calling you my love is the only way
that i can depend on you without feeling weak.”

“i dreamt of you
sitting and singing on the blue couch
of my childhood home.
home that my parent’s respective loves burnt long ago.
you remind me of hope now.”

“i hold your name more dearly than your hand,
because your hands are so human that i can’t seem to love them
the way i love you.
i stop myself from telling you
how my own humanness makes me hate myself.
have you heard of the heart that changes its mind too often
that abandons as easily as it takes up new obsession,
that makes us miserable even when we should be happy,
even when we have all we want.
i have that. you have that.
that’s what i hate. that’s what i fear.
i stop myself from telling you
how often i wonder
that even this love for you might be a grand way of looking
at the easy way out.”

“All your cold dark songs” – Nayana Nair

as i get inside the crowded bus,
a phone rings.
a ringtone just like yours.

has the world shrunk to the size
of the tragedy we created,
that i find you like this?

i know it is not you,
but it could be.
so i do not turn back.
it could be you,
so i try not to cry.

this is not where
walking away or breaking clean
should lead to.
at least not back to you.
at least not like this.
not on the day i finally felt
that i could move toward a new happiness.

why did you come back?
to tell me how i am not worthy of anything good?
to tell me no one can love something like me?
to tell me how thinking is unhealthy for love like ours?
to check if my skin remembers your anger?
to tell me to speak softly, to submit to your wishes
if i wish to be forgiven for your mistakes?

why did you come back,
when you don’t even want me?

“What I Remember (13)” – Nayana Nair

i did all that i must do
and now no one asks me what’s next.
thankfully,
no one burdens me with with their dreams anymore.
i am no longer a possible candidate for the worst,
for taking over the misfortune of my mother’s life.
i no longer have to worry about hurting my parents by
being like them or living like them.
thankfully,
what bothers me, what eats me up
is nothing that would keep anyone else awake
and that is important.

in spite of this emptiness i write about
and this loneliness that seems bigger than this world,
all this do not stop me
from laughing at jokes, craving for food that i shouldn’t eat,
dreaming of another broken love with my only lover,
from having a good time – that i will conveniently forget.
nothing i cry about, no ailing that lives in me
is too large to stop me from living.

i guess i carry an instability in my genes.
if my eyes are in the color of sadness,
i guess i got it from my parents.
and they are lovely people who somehow raised me right
in spite of having a tendency to mess up things
and their sadness with life.

tomorrow i will probably hate them frequently again
but they will nag at me when i reach home drenched in rain,
will tell me sit straight and force me to eat what will keep me alive,
will ask me to keep my phone down,
and sleep a little bit more.

they will not ask what’s wrong and that will disappoint me,
but they will let me do what i want to do (sometimes)
and they will try their best not to wrong me.
they will wish for my happiness,
even if they have no idea what makes me happy
and that is important.

because though i lived my extended teenage
believing that i had no one,
but it was not true.
i saw no one
and it is my fault.
even when i thought i was not loved
they have loved me silently.
though it was a tiring love,
it knew no end.

“Childhood Photo” – Nayana Nair

i do not want to be a child
who thinks that the world is this window
where i wait for you to return.
but i am.

and you are also the one
who has promised to never return.
but you have made many promises
and you have broken so many of it.
i guess i am counting on you
to stay true to who you are
and break another one.

i have done well on all my exams.
i have cleaned my room.
i have eaten all the greens.
you will be able to love me now.

they say you found love late
and the ones in love never return
to the loveless families
they want to forget.
have we been forgotten?
are we your embarrassing childhood photo?

mother cries a lot these days
and so i can’t cry anymore.
i can’t cry anymore
and i hate you for taking away my tears.

“Afloat” – Nayana Nair

I find myself more broken that I was before.
I find myself praying to every deity who did me wrong,
who never cared,
praying that they changed their mind,
hoping that maybe today they will find me pitiful enough
and finally see me as one of their child.

-x-

And while they continue to stay silent and cruel and distant,
I tell myself that they are doing this for my own good,
that all love cannot be the same.
But these days
I can’t even believe these words
that kept me afloat for so long.
So now, I have found another lie to tell myself
that “everyone suffers like me”
and though it is enough to stop me from tearing up
but the pain doesn’t pass,
and it is no one fault but mine.
That I continued to need the love
that didn’t need me back.