“The eyes of my mother” – Nayana Nair

I planted the idea of a happy family,
a happy tomorrow,
into the eyes of my mother
with breaking tips of my pencils
against her granite eye lashes.

I told her the story about the boy
who is ever so sad
because his parents didn’t care enough,
who weeps on his empty birthdays,
who weeps into my heart.
I tell her I am not so fine myself.
Maybe she didn’t hear me clearly,
cause she didn’t stop
her daily charade of writing her “the last letter”.

I cleared her bed, her table, her words, her being
from the perfectly modeled replica of world in my mind.
I showed her, “Look, this is how I will look
with you gone. Look, look at what you must not do to me.”

She pulled me close, and held my hand for a bit too long,
a bit too tenderly
as if letting me know, telling me
“Look, this is how I look when I am alive.
Look, look at me pouring out of myself, dragging my feet
even till the end. Look, look at what I can no longer live as.”

And I stood there for a long time,
slowly understanding things I possibly couldn’t.
I stood there for a long time,
till my mom’s face was replaced by that of the ever so sad boy
as he held me, letting me cry into him
for the hundredth time.

“Nothing to do with love” – Nayana Nair

I want this sadness that dissolves in me,
that never goes away,
never stands apart from me,
never looks me in the face with questions
or even answers.
I am ready to take vow with this heartbreak
as long as it feels like you,
promises eventually to replace you,
as long as my love is greater than you.
I do nor have to miss you,
call you, beg you,
force myself to forgive you,
hate you silently,
or practice breaking with grace.
I do not have to do things
that have nothing to with love
as long my sadness is mine alone.
I can bear this and more
as long as I remember my genuine heart
and not you.

“To the one who who couldn’t change me” – Nayana Nair

The answers I hear
are never the words you speak.

The answers I hear answers are
poorly dubbed clips of proven cruelties and truth
that only a stranger to my pain could utter,
that only you could utter.

It is the thoughtlessness
with which you try to pronounce hope with ease in front of me,
even when you know the names of all the dead ends and dead smiles
where hope has always led me to.

It is the thoughtlessness with which you try to replace
the glowing shards of sad words from my crown
that I have fallen in love with-
my eternal friends who are as unwanted as me.

My crown and its sharpness are just walls for you
and my claims of love for who I am is just an act.

My dark feelings take up more space
than me or you combined
and yet you like to call me small.

Your light
only gives me new shadows to play with
and yet you call me weak.

The color of my eyes and song in my heart
don’t change for your liking
and my love for you doesn’t change.
Yet you call my passions temporary.

While my answers are the ones
that you cannot accept or even see.

My answers exist in a place where I exist
not in a place where you or me would like to be.

I hold onto your hands as much as I try to let go
-that is my answer
Those are the words that you cannot speak.

“some sort of attachment, if not love” – Nayana Nair

A new announcer has replaced the old one.
The one with the shrill voice
is too tired or too sad to continue, I guess.
This new one, she sounds more like my type.
She seems like the one who will define my types.
I am so thankful she is not the one who tells me to go back to sleep
when I am crying at 3 without knowing why.
So thankful that this deserted night, this cold concrete,
her cold instructions, her reminder to wait patiently
reminds me that this is also a day I will forget
if I do not do anything.
I am so thankful that I cannot confess my laughable weakness to her.
If I wait as she tells me to
my life will come swooping in and take me somewhere else-
a new place where I will hate everyone again
for not speaking the way I like, for loving me wrong,
for not accompanying me on the empty train stations
when I try to run away from all that I have built,
from all that I have tried to call my new beginning.

“A Sadness to Replace You” – Nayana Nair

The lines are drawn.
The teams have been split.
Now I must show loyalty only to “my kind”.
Now I must learn by heart
the roads that I am not allowed to take.
Your heart probably lies on one of those roads.
That’s probably the reason, why my feet won’t walk in your direction.

What is it like to live in the better half of the world?
My limited imagination sees you as only you
and that’s why I know that I am going to be hurt badly.
A friend tells me with sadness, “staying away would be kinder love”.
He plays me a beautiful tune, a melody to replace you,
a consolation of sorts, a very poor (though thoughtful) consolation.

The sun is a quadrant setting only on my half of world,
although no one has yet tried to split this moon.
How fortunate are we to share at least this sorrow, at least the night.
On every night sky you are my hope written in neon.
Every morning, you are a dream that I force myself to forget.
But no words, no consolation can make me forget you.

“The Dying Voices of my Angels” – Nayana Nair

Hold this,
whatever this is.

Hold this
till I find a way to hide it,
get rid of it,
or kill it.

They say I will die the moment
I set the monster in me ablaze.
But this is the reason
warnings no longer work on me.

This is why I cannot live the way I want.

This is why ‘what I now want’
is ‘what I never ever wanted to want’.

Don’t take pity on me
nor on this thing that eats me
and replaces my every cell
with hateful words
and spiteful actions.

Why are you holding me down?
Why are you holding me back?
Why do you want to preserve me like this-
at my worst?

I am becoming better at creating excuses.
I am becoming better at forgetting the hurt I cause.

It kills me to see myself straying away from my ideals.
Doesn’t that matter a bit?

“Collecting Myself” – Nayana Nair

These four walls that cuts us off from the world
puts me again in that same position that I dread.
My weakness that I once thought I had cast away
is holding onto my fingers again.
If only the world had not abandoned me here with you.
I could have found some comfort in its words-
“you are worth better” or “you are happier alone“,
then I could avoid this hurt that has already risen in me.

~

As usual you look out of the window.
You have always been good at ignoring my presence and my feelings.
I have always envied you for being like this,
for being able to stand your ground, being sure of hatred
and not looking back at what didn’t work out.
But not me.
I believe too much in second chances-
the second chances that I never got.
I am again that person
who is thinking up of words to say
to make you stay,
trying to find a promise that I have not uttered yet
that will make you realize that I cannot be replaced in your heart.

~

But there are days that you have let me down
and days where I have not been enough for you-
the memory of which all my tears have not been able to wash away.
So I collect my belongings and myself
to get out of this painful isolation with you,
this fruitless attempt of our hopeful friends
who wish to see us happy and together again.
I no longer believe love
to be an effort of one person
to latch onto the other who wants to leave
who always has a better plan
and a better person in mind to move toward.
I no longer have the heart to love you anymore.

“Saviour” – Nayana Nair

This sad heart of yours,
this heart that I love the most,
I wondered once
why it couldn’t rise above what it is suffering from
even when you have me.
Why as I sit with you talking about myself
you smile as if trying to contain the tears
that you won’t be able to explain.

x

I have always felt that even though
we were meant to go through everything together
it was just me
looking at you
fighting someone who I couldn’t even see.

x

Every drop of love that I bring to you
end up being just another drop of expectation
that helps you drown that much faster.

x

And when I am done being disappointed with myself
for being insufficient,
for not being able to make a difference in your life,
I end up thinking that maybe
sometimes love cannot exorcise
the feelings that we have for ourselves
and maybe I just need to learn to see the you
who is able to smile instead of all that you suffer from
with pride
instead of taking pity on you
and trying to replace you as your saviour
when you are doing a fine job being one yourself.

“Glossy Paper” – Nayana Nair

I had too many magazines of glossy paper
with pictures of places better than where I live.
I always bought the one showing better lives.
(what can I possible do or dream with knowing the worse ones)
I would like to say that I remember each beach I saw,
that I remember the colors I never knew sand could take,
that I remember knowing exactly how my footsteps would look like
for they were already there on that foreign land
waiting for me to claim the prints that no one else could take.
But I do not remember all that.
I remember thinking all that, but not what I saw.
Now any picture that I scroll by in seconds
could replace the place that I wanted to see.
That’s probably why I do not bother
with spending my time on images of cheaper paradise
that I now know I cannot walk into just because they exist.

I am a firm believer of words now.
There is a place I read of
and I create it in my mind
particle by particle.
Every place I read is my creation,
that cannot exist without me.
I have all kinds of better world in my mind
and they feel nothing like the ones
I have stopped dreaming about.

“Book that I can’t read” – Nayana Nair

The book
that I can’t read
is not abandoned on the shelves
has not been moved to the lowest rack
because it is bad.
But because so much of me
is filled in it.
So many words from my heart reside on those pages,
that I am bound to question
if this is the reason I felt so empty for years.
Someone sat up all night
looking into me,
taking away my pain and shame
to relieve me of this weight.
But ended up taking more than they should
and didn’t know any other way
than to send it back to me in a book.
I wish I could go out
and burn every copy of this book
in every bookstore on earth-
this book that I can’t read myself.
But I must keep it with me always
so that if I am silenced forever
even after I leave
someone
at least someone
would see that I tried
when they open this book
and see the crossed out names
replaced with mine.