“To stay” – Nayana Nair

.

The city of wax and sun was,
for the lack of better words,
like living in a home that will vanish
and does vanish-
the vanishing always a spectacle and a sorrow.
The nights were all about
breathing religiously every second
to catch a brick, a bell, a railing to hold onto,
the dear gods carved in stones,
the plate touched by my mother.
Breathing in again and again
and coming up all empty,
we used to wait for sun and dread its heat
always worried and excited
about the drops and vapors we would catch
and all that we were going to lose.
Since nothing apart from the breathing would survive,
since the new-born stone and grass
knew nothing of death or its mark,
there never was a funeral,
no graves, no photographs to devote our tears to.
All our oceans would rise within us
falling at the steps, the stones, the memories
of everything that cannot prove its reason to stay
anymore.

“Fossil” – Nayana Nair

Drop by drop the wax fills
the bucket of broken butterflies.

I am falling into another sleep,
into another death that is warm,
that embraces me like no lover ever has.

I feel the pain in my wings, and unlike other days
I try to think that this will never pass.
That I will remain like this, with a bit of pain always there
in my shoulder blades, under my ribs, aching for a memory that floats
above my body, above my existence.

Someone holds my hand and I let them.
I was always afraid of living and dying alone.
I guess there are many like me.

Years from now they will find us
and probably write stories
about how we loved each other even in death.
As they look at our almost ruined and almost saved faces
they won’t know how we died heartbroken,
how we held onto each other
but never dared to look at each other
or ask the names we had started to hate.
How our skins melted into each other only because
we had nowhere else to be.
That even as light broke free from our eyes
we didn’t want to look like failure.

“she must have been as lovely as you once were” – Nayana Nair

i happened to find a picture of yours
a blue ocean engulfing two shadows

it must have killed you
to have come back alone

to sit and imagine what she could lived like
if you were the one lost and buried in the sea

even though you are wretched and she is gone
but it is because you held her hand too tight

that you still feel her hand
slipping from yours every night

“Last Dream” – Nayana Nair

Last night
I wanted to dream of you
but I couldn’t.
The picture of you
that I had in my mind
was that of the smile
that was never yours,
just a front for the photographs
that you never wanted to be taken.

***

And all I could remember about you was
how you would move noiselessly
through my home, my mind and my memories
with a care that I didn’t have.
How your silent nods
were my greatest assurance.
How your hands were my gloves.
How you enveloped me with your presence
and burned till I forgot the freezing world.
How for a short period of my life
I was glad to be myself,
that I was the one you loved.
I wanted that lost time to be my dream,
to find you in that dream
and to tell you that you are precious to me.
So that the smiles on your photographs become real.
So that I become the reason of your beautiful smiles.

“Distort You” – Nayana Nair

This one.
This is the photograph I was telling you about the other day.
You see those kids around me,
having broader smile than me
those are the friends I never had.
They will tell you otherwise.
What they tell maybe more hopeful than my lies
or maybe more sadder than my truth.
But I tried my best to magnify my everyday happiness
make fun of how I reacted to all that once hurt,
and leave my sentences hanging
when I couldn’t decide
how to distort another unwanted memory.
I tried my best neutralize my story
so that I won’t look like a lost cause,
like a cause that needs your attention,
that demands your love in the name of humanity.
I never tried to soften your heart
by selling my story
But looking at you,
I think I have ended up doing all the things
I didn’t mean to.