“Give you away” – Nayana Nair

I wonder
if the roles I play
are really what I want to be.
Or is it too late?

Are my roles,
my not-so-temporary voices
already doing
the dreaming and the wanting
in my place
for me?

I see you and utter “love me”
without thinking twice.
Even if you find
some love left in you to give up,
I wonder
is there any “me” left in me
to love you back.

Would I end up setting you up
with a heartless cruel face of mine?
Would I hold your hand, only to give you away
to the parts of me, that cannot ever understand
how precious you are?

“I love you (probably)” – Nayana Nair

I wish falling for you was easier
but it isn’t, it could never be
that is not how you like it-
easy love goes only as far as that
and maybe that is why I loved you.
Or maybe that’s what I tell myself.
Everything I tell myself is a whisper,
a secret from you.
I tell myself stories of a ‘you’
that probably never existed.
I hope you never get to hear them,
for now even my sacrifices feel like betrayals.
I am afraid, till the end
my heart would only be able to love the fiction of you.
I am afraid, till the end
you would remain unloved.
Even when you don’t deserve to be.
That hurts me more than knowing that
even I cannot be truly loved by you.

“Pillar” – Nayana Nair

I do not know how to help you.

I am used to relying on you,
to make everything right.

You are supposed to be the strongest one.
Or were you always like this?

Was your strength a make-belief,
my excuse
for not caring,
for not doing anything.

I do not know how to hold your hand
when you refuse to be held.
I am confused if you really mean it
when you ask to be left alone.

Teach me through your tears,
who you are, when you are not my pillar.

Tailoring Myself

I was running from myself, trying to be someone different for each person of importance in my life, tailoring myself to their needs, choosing personas to inhabit and abandon, wearing masks that only obscured my own desires and the gravity of my choices. I was code-switching for the hell of it, without much purpose but with plenty of precision.

-Brandon Harris, “The lies we tell ourselves about gentrification“