“Oddly Enough” – Nayana Nair

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Somehow I feel that
the ropes that we walked on
for each others sake
were never really ropes
but figment of our imagination
stretching from your mind to mine
connecting centers of chaos
and wanting and hatred without direction.

Once I thought we stood together
against everything else,
against every force of reality.
But now that my sockets have grown eyes
and now that we have moved so far away from
our self-indulgent blindness
that we could never separate ourself from.

Now every glimpse of past is sad and pitiful.
Looking back why does it seem
we were just clinging to each other
as if we were each other’s last hope.
As if we let go, we would never know happiness of any kind.
As if we held on, we could change each other
and find in each others changing a reason to smile.

But thankfully or regrettably, I have not grown much
cause sometimes I feel thankful to you
for sharing all the dark moments with me
even if you caused half of them.
I feel oddly grateful to you
for sharing my pitiful fate, my mundane days,
my cycles of planned and impulsive destruction,
for walking with me to our day of separation.

I hope that we find happiness in future
without pinning our hopes on the ruin of another.
I hope we see the ruin when our hands begin to create one.
It was not all bad. Or maybe it was worse than I remember.
Oddly enough I wouldn’t change our fates.
But I will never wish for it again.

“The ground I won’t find” – Nayana Nair

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Even when I run away from you.
Even when I hate you from the depth of my heart-
the same depth where only you can breathe,
where I can allow no one but you.
Even then
you sit there, in front of me,
reminding me
how difficult it is
to destroy this love,
whose truth and strength
outlives
each sad, tragic moment that comes our way,
each moment of separation
that we are capable of creating from our ugly wants.
Once I couldn’t have imagined
the joy and frustration
of having a love like that.
A love that has no end
when end is all I want.
A love that tells me again and again
that I do not really know anything
and takes away the key of choice every time from my hands.
A love that will not even spare me to stay alive.
What a blessing! What a curse!
To have this bottomless hope.

“There is nothing to be sad about” – Nayana Nair

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I find myself
amidst the flowers
that continue to bloom even without her.
I find myself
smiling, blooming, even dreaming, .
trying to hold a bit more life in my hands
in spite of the holes
that are now three-fourth of my identity,
that won’t let me keep anything.
As I continue to pass through
everything everything I run towards
I think
maybe this is the only correct for me to live,
this is probably the only fate I could accept anyway.

“maybe once” – Nayana Nair

his name doesn’t feel like a dying world now.
once,
maybe once
blue was his favorite word,
i was his favorite person thing medicine game hope
but now that he is burning all his notebooks
i believe life is getting better for him.
he paints skies for me, paints me flowers
that have never known cold.
once,
maybe once
i could let myself rest in him
but now that he has found himself
i can’t bear to be lost in front of him.

“Zooming In” – Nayana Nair

When I sit still
I am not waiting.
I am thinking of what is not
and why it should never have been.
I zoom into every empty space
and practice how to look away when it hurts me.
I remove my watch from my wrist
and place it next to plate for a better view
and a ruined palate.
I start from the names I know,
I start from the what they used to be
and what they have become.
All the while not addressing
the forest in the middle of my home
and the animal cries in my chest.
The fog in your mind
now spreads into mine.
Now I sometimes forget your name
as you forgot mine.
I dream of making you cry
to forget my own tears.
I wait and sometimes dream
that you would never arrive,
that I would forget whom I was waiting for
and I would smile not knowing why.

“Folds” – Nayana Nair

You are gone
and I try to hold the spoon like you used to.
I chew my food with my left molars as you did.
The ghosts that I have wronged, that I have forgotten
now include half of my teeth, teeth you would have never used.

You are gone
and you are happy (probably).
So I memorize name and phone number
of your every friend,
I recall the fondness you had for them.
I wear your feelings when I meet them,
I wear your feelings even when they won’t fit me.
I wonder if they noticed how I was spilling at some places,
how I was non existent in other folds-
folds that used to hold you so well.

You are gone
and I am gone (or that’s what I think).
I am my work, I am my songs,
I am the adjectives you made for me,
I am the report cards, I am the dust that settles on it,
I am the afternoon TV shows, I am the language I don’t understand.
I am what I am fond of.
I am mostly just you.

You are gone
and I fear
there is no one that can
stop me from growing
into you.

“The Noise of Empty Heart” – Nayana Nair

I close your heart.
I stitch you back
in a same haphazard way
I do almost everything in life.
The same way I knocked down
every clumsy fragile landmark
that could have actually helped me at the end.

From your mouth I have come to know
that my hopes are tied to the throats of my saviors.
That you are disgusted as you see me
sitting on top of sleepless nights
as I help myself with another serving of self-pity
that I won’t be able to digest.
That I laugh a little too long at the every joke
that the world plays on repeat,
all the while the cruel thread that I am
I cut the skin, I cut the voice, I cut the air.

“this what i am, change me in an easy way, see this is how i am hurting, why won’t you look at me when you said you wanted was the real me”

I say as I try to crawl back into the hide of your love.

“i will stitch you back, if i have hurt you. if you want to hear goodbye, i will say it a thousand times. please, please stop crying. please for once hesitate before you ask for the door out. ask for once if it was easy to take in your sorrows, your demons, your cold shoulder. ask for once how i have fared, how i have come this far, how am i letting you go, letting you be, after loving you so badly. “

“As the fire dies out” – Nayana Nair

After a long time, I feel like walking
towards the calm unknown.
The wildness in me that I had thrown away,
is waiting for me.
They were always waiting
to tell me all the gossips of stars and fishes,
how lost and alone they both felt
to know that blue they had in common
were totally different worlds.

The clothes that made me look somewhat beautiful
I fold them with care,
leave it somewhere you won’t miss.
Their newness would be the new metaphor for sadness,
sadness – yours and mine.

There must be a magic to undo this curse of our feelings.
There must be an answer, a life
that doesn’t necessarily need us to be together.
I will ask the cruel fairies that live in dying breaths
to make you forget me at sunrise,
to make me feel something for you again,
as my life with you ends.

“Half-Hearted” – Nayana Nair

And every morning I hear wind, I hear birds,
I hear children play around in me.
I am filling myself
with everything that reminds me of what I really am.
I let my heart do what it wants,
my heart wants no part in this remaking of me.
It starts it’s days praying for your return
and goes to sleep, thankful that you won’t.

“you know where you have hidden your light” – Nayana Nair

have you come to find the life, the hand
that lit every eye that you have come across?

you can sit here and look at me for your whole life
but you won’t forget the one whom you cannot face.

she had a sweeter heart than mine, i can guess.
every lover in their best moment were as lovely as this mother earth.

i won’t compete, i won’t love you better.
tell me the parts of you that she lit, i will let them burn you away.

i won’t talk like her, i won’t tell you i understand.
so hold my hand and miss her as much as you can.

in my lacking, see her face.
take the name you have been dreading to approach.

confess your love to the one you have lost.
make peace with the part of you that won’t let her memory rest.

divinity only takes away things that you treasure.
so, remembering is the only easy way to forget.