“I think of you” – Nayana Nair

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On this new morning, as this new cold finds my old bones,
I think of you.

Today when your name surfaces on the silent lake
I do not row towards it, I do not push it down.

I stare and breathe as the water moves
you and me.

I stare, without making my knuckles red,
without holding onto you or myself.

The mist of time and the storms of words-not-meant
they rise and settle and we part,

just as we rehearsed,
just as we have performed a thousand times in life.

I look back and see only a sunrise of a color you’d like.
I float a thank you, a broken oar towards you,

a hope for your life and some peace for mine.
All that I have loved has been eaten away by time.

Your body, your mind is now broken
into thousand scattered restless dots of dust

so when I think of you, in my mind
you are the life of the light. So unlike your presence in my life.

You remain that even as I lose my grasp
over the meaning and texture of love.

I forget what we were really like.
So I often get to miss you. You often make me smile.

“The roads that I promised never to walk on” – Nayana Nair

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There are so many things that I wait to see again
and none of them will do my heart any good.
There are mountains and flags and footsteps
all settled into the sleep, lost in this busy blue.
Some call it drowning. Some call it the end of things.
Some wait for it to rise and become the lonely peak once again.
Some like me float my boat on this ocean
all dressed in sad flashy optimism
with my poor eyesight and a grainy foresight
ready to cry.
Some like me wait for the things they fear,
wait for the things that break, that tear.

All beautiful things of past are now buried
under a common grave with no stone, no epitaph.
I can’t tell apart my love from theirs.
My growing years, my diminishing heart,
the roads that I promised never to walk on,
the hands I promised never to leave-
they call it theirs.
They hold it in their arms
whenever after years of aimless floating
their boat gets caught by a shadow
that wants them.

Meanwhile I am afraid of holding back anything
that tries to stop me. Every pull frightens me
that I might love something that is not mine
that I will never know if this happiness is just
my sickness of water, sickness of search and waiting.
I can never look anyone in the eye
in the fear of seeing someone else’s tears,
in the fear of seeing my own corruptibility reflected.

And yet I can’t seem to end this search
for there are so many things I fear I will never feel again
if I end it all here.
Though they happen to be the same things
that I am incapable of believing in ever again.

“my eyes miss everything” – Nayana Nair

i try not to think
about the places that are lost
and evaporated
only leaving clouds of colorless memories
floating on my not so blue sky

places that are lost
not only to me
but to this world
now no one will ever know the sweetness
of the light that was never beautiful enough
to be captured and framed
light that is only beautiful only in its death
beautiful only when it rises up without a reason
on the surface of our eyes

how my eyes miss seeing everything
that now cannot be seen
my eyes wake up from the dream of yesterday
into this new day that i must write
feeling that again i have lost something,
something meaningful in that dream
that will never return to me
a dream that i have no right to dream again

i try not to think about such losses
losses with name or reason or heartache
but no matter how much try
some days that is all i can think about

“Dissociate” – Nayana Nair

my other head
bleeds and falls off
as does my bloody knife

i can no longer call myself a victim of life
now that my sin is set in stone

few more hours for the sun to rise
few more hours i must bear the company of my face
in few more hours the world will love me
now that i look like them and kill like them
they will surely love me
for having one less brain and one less mouth

my eyes look back at me
not accusingly but with pity
of what have i done to myself
but i dare not cry
and act as if i am the one being wronged
my tears- i’ll be burying them under the red petunias
that you loved

my hearts beats furiously
as if running towards something, perhaps an end
end of me? end of her?
it feels wrong saying “her”, “you”
as if a knife is all it takes to set things conveniently wrong

i close the door and leave my open mouth
and questioning eyes on the kitchen table
i break a nail and break my heart
as i dig two graves for myself

“Hope you feel the same” – Nayana Nair

I read about the life you left behind.
About the days when love couldn’t protect anyone.
Days when there rose a necessary evil in you.
It seems once you were good enough
to fall for the traps that I live in.
I wish I had known the fragile you,
but maybe it is all for the best,
for my cruelty walks hand in hand with my love.

In your room, as you smile
and joke about the tears you have hidden in your diaries,
about the new hearts that you had to grow every year.
As I peel off my makeup and my sarcastic words,
I realize that I am about to fall for you
(probably for all the wrong reasons).

Though I might not have been looking
for someone sad to love,
but ‘not having to explain’ helps.
It helps that you, like me, know and understand
that showing wounds sometimes hurt more than getting them.

“Sunrise” – Nayana Nair

the sun doesn’t rise here
and that’s fine.
it is not sad,
not as sad as the world
where all the light does is
stay away from where we are.

“Stop my tears” – Nayana Nair

The lines that you drew to my heart
all of them are dissolving,
so easily.
Is forgetting,
is leaving that easy?
I look at you
and try to find somewhere in you
some feelings for me,
an attachment that could mirror
the state of my heart.

-o-

I am sorry that I am disappointed
when I told you I won’t be.
I am sorry that I cannot rise above
this weakness that love brings back in me.
But what is the alternative?
-the lonely days
-the days spent hating the world
-days spent hating the one I love
-days spent in regret
-days spent breaking those whom I can touch but never love
-days spent waiting for you to come back
and meanwhile converting every hour of my suffering
into an life of anger
that you must bear
even if you return
I hate them.
I hate all these alternative.

-o-

I have no option but to hold you
and hope that after all this time
maybe a little part of you would stay,
if only for the sake of stopping my tears.

“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.

“Counting Losses” – Nayana Nair

I can only go as far as my muscle memory takes me.
Since my mind is not here
and I can’t leave this body
that I have never been able to accept as mine.
There is a road that lies in front of me
and there is nothing for me to do
but to walk.
You bring me back to present
and ask me where I have been.
There is a place that I left lifetimes ago,
where I am searching for the reason of my grief.
There is a sun that rises only in the heart of the lost,
there is a mist I live in that you cannot see.
I can stand at any edge and be sure I won’t fall.
I can reach out for any happiness that I am sure I can’t have
and nothing will hurt me more than that.
There are losses that I am counting,
there are bruises I must count as gain only because of love.
Every hope I find
becomes a reminder of something I have already lost.
Can you teach me-
how to go about this life,
how to get rid of this part of me
that can only love the past?

“Difference” – Nayana Nair

Her head floats in the sea of sleep,
in the rising and falling waves of dreams,
in the island of blankets
that is kept warm only by her own body.
As the light in her room changes its hue,
the chill on her window
melts into the nothingness
that the day always brings.
Words and vision come to the surface of life
before she does.
She hears her voice
-“I hope this the day that makes
the difference”.
She dismisses it
as the ghosts that have overstayed.
Holding her falling parts in a life
crushed under the weight of its own hopes.