“Is this what this distance, this decision means?” – Nayana Nair

With my back to the my cold family name
the metallic alphabets printing hard on my clothes,
I stand
with my feet half out of my pretty shoes –
with my painted nails still hidden in the skin of another animal,
my hands revolving the beautiful replica of Saturn
around the plastic heart on my elaborate key chain- a stage of its own.
I stand and wait for you to open your door on the floor above.
I hear a faint click, a phone ring, footsteps running away from the world
(why do I feel such sadness when I hear that?),
a door left open (to everyone but me)
I sit in the middle of my living room floor
staring up, at the underside- the creeping mold
of the stage where I played your lover, your nemesis.
It is cruel and incomprehensible that we can still live,
take calls, make jokes, eat, and still have the want to live.
After hurting ourselves and the world for the sake of love,
after all that, is this is it?
When you find your room, your world without me
which direction does your heart turn towards?
Do forget from time to time that we are supposed to forget each other?
When I find my loneliness becoming greater than me,
when it starts spilling out of me on dinner table,
when it makes me lose my mind, am I allowed to let go of you?
Is this what this distance, this decision means?
I hear your window open, I hear your excited voice
(why do I feel color of anger filling me again?).
I wonder if you have really found your new life
or is this an act you have put for my benefit?
Your kindness could only be in my head, as was your love.
TV drowns your voice again
and I thank all the accidents, all the things out of my control,
everything that moves us away from each other.
Otherwise, I never could.

“maintain my world” – Nayana Nair

and this sad premise is not a commentary
on how rotten the world is
but an observation
that we have a pattern that is hard to break.

that people often misinterpret the habit of one thing
as a proof of its superiority over everything else in world.

that words can move your heart,
sometimes for worse.
it can move you towards hatred, towards fear
towards anger that is not your own.

that the wish to be right
makes us forget how to wear someone else’s shoes
or their color or their nationality or their body.
a body that is no longer their own – now that
they are just a sack of blood, a sacrifice
to please our personal gods – our thirst of power
and the “better world” that no one else wants.

this sad premise is not a commentary
on how rotten the world is
for i do not have the courage to write the worst
or to imagine how i am right now walking
over faceless nameless beings to maintain my world
just like you.

“Glow in dark” – Nayana Nair

it was once possible
to be a parrot who was a doctor
who sang in a choir of angels
who saved the world from villains
with ridiculously evil funny names.

it was easy to speak of wants-
a pair of shoes with lights
and a glow in dark radium cello tape
and an army uniform and cream rolls
and a tiara with anything that shines
and the cards i don’t know how to play
and…

once i used to be simple.
i left my sleep
to live like the guy
who runs for hundred years
to rescue the princess.
waiting to reach
a blurry 8-bit princess
that never shows up at any castle
of my world
was not a source of
disappointment (or depression) then.

“Scroll” – Nayana Nair

I scrolled through
and then scrolled back again.
I did this too many times
comparing each picture with another.
I knew I would not remember even one of them
and probably edit out
all uncomfortable and evident pain
but carry only the image I could see in all.
That all who were struck by lightning
carried that lightning on their skin
but the skin remembers only the darkness of that hour.
Sometimes it felt I am looking at an unlucky individual
picked out by nature to brand the helplessness of our species.
Sometimes I was in awe of the life that refused to leave the heart
even when it stopped,
even when the brightest death called for it.
But I knew that it was one beauty I do not envy
and I don’t want to be in their shoes.
I probably wanted to remember proofs
of when human and nature were
at their weakest and their worst
and how magnificent the scars of it are
to the eyes of a person like me
who was not there to suffer.

“How Easily”-Nayana Nair

The rain has left
leaving behind puddles
and mud sticking to the sole of my clean clean shoes.
But this muddy road I walk on
it glistens like diamonds
under the streetlight.
And picture seems more beautiful, feels more beautiful
than what I expected it to be.

 Slowly my eyes, absorb this picture
and it dawns on me.
How lovely it is
to walk alone
on this road,
to feel the cold and dampness,
to feel the drizzle,
with the curtain of dark night hanging on this cityscape
and the land illuminated in orange light.

I realize how easily
we can forget about the things we love
or used to love.
And how easily they will creep back
into our heart
when we least expect.