“Tomorrow I will be complete” – Nayana Nair

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I saw my shadow
cowering in the corner of the derelict store room.
I could not bear to sit down beside it,
so I closed the door and waited outside.

Even as my eyes looked at the world,
I was aware of the one crying inside.
Even as I answered every question of the world
and laughed most appropriately at the words
that were said with intent of making me smile,
all I could think of was “when would it be my turn?”.

I kept losing track of the doors I had closed.
I kept growing new shadows.
Against all my hopes,
all of them found their way to every grief possible
and eventually found a way to hide and cry somewhere new.

All I did meanwhile is to
wait for my turn to cry,
wait for someone to close the door and stand guard,
till I find and rearrange
the pieces of flesh remaining in my chest
to look something like a heart.

I kept repeating “Tomorrow, I will become a better person.
Tomorrow, I will be complete.
Tomorrow, I will realize I have always been complete.”
I kept repeating these words even when I knew that
anything and anyone that separates from me
is lost forever.
There doesn’t exist a way back to me in this world.

“Fine and Minute” – Nayana Nair

I thought I am getting better
when I found a little more space in me for life
than what I thought I had.
When I stopped trying to hide it from my own eyes
and let small birds perch on its rusted edges
all long as they please.
But when they fly away, their voices
slowly disappears and reappears
disperses and dissolves in the air,
reminding me of days I existed
in pieces so fine and minute
that
I found myself
lacking voice, wants, or ambition.
Slowly becoming the air and food for
someone else’s need.
I find that the pain never passes.
It only forgets itself until it touches
the edges that once cut through it.
But not everything it touches has that same edge
and between the sudden encounters
with the lookalikes of what I was,
I can rest, I can breathe.

“In my care” – Nayana Nair

How unfortunate
that your dream had to be about me.
That you placed all the pieces left of you
in that dream
and placed it in my care.
If only you had seen the cracked edges of mine
that were going to become your future.
If only I had known my incapability
to love or be loved.
I would not have to see your tears.
I would not have to ache this bad.
Why have you become the book I pick up every now and then,
but never have the courage to finish nor to give up.

“Beg ” – Nayana Nair

Everything I look at
is sweet impression of your younger self
playing in the garden of my heart.
The shrads from this broken world
stuck in everything
around me.
Why is it that
when I look at a bus stop,
when I look at the sky,
when I look at the chairs,
when I look at my own hand,
they all remind me of you.
They all carry a part of you
even if they have never known your touch.
I have begged these vision
to get down from my eyes,
to come down from my heart.
I have begged them to become a poem.
I have begged them to live forever in you heart.

You look at me
and I see the unfairness of a love like mine.
I have nightmares in which
there are pieces of broken stars
from your sky
lying at my feet.
I see words slashing at my wrist.
I see glares that mock my tears.
I see my battered skin
and the worst uses of makeup.
I see nights where I must stay up and cry.
I feel fear of something sleeping beside me,
I feel whatever I fear was once “you”.
In those nightmares
I have begged this pain-
to leave my mind
when I wake up and look at you again.
I have begged them
to become my poems.
I have begged them to die with me.

“JEWEL ROUND THE NECK”- Nayana Nair

As this light streams into my shielded existence

To light up these lines and touch my soul.

I’m reminded of all the lights in past

That have done so before.

The light that scorched my skin, as I sipped melting ice.

The fiery orange haze around which we sang.

And the streaks of rainbows moving across our notes

From the scales we held in our hand.

The lazy and tired rays of sun

Finding their way through December mist

to reach multitude of small droopy eyes

And prayer chanting lips.

The mosaic of lights of shops and streetss

Where the light from the mirror revealed your smile.

The light in my eyes your presence brings.

The faint light of dawn that filled up my mind.

I wish to gather all such light

All the tiny relevant drops

Even irrelevant splashes

To string them into one

Incomplete jewel round the neck

With that last piece , last light missing.

I wonder what it would be like.

Would it be like my first forgotten light

Or will it be the light of your eyes,

That will see me off at the edge.

Where all pains and joys vanish.

Where bodies die and memories die.

And love becomes eternal with fading light.