“All the talk about survival” – Nayana Nair

I walking around this planet
talking about survival
as if I actually lived to survive.
I didn’t.
There are many who do
but they are not the ones who are filling the world
with papers filled reeking of envy and tears.
The ones who are really desperate,
who really fear extinction-
disappear as they fear
without leaving a trace of the hurt
that had so engulfed them.

~

I think I have it better.
I know I have it easy.
My pain though has become my life long mission
it only drinks me up sip by sip,
never finishing me in one gulp
but to leave me alive and thriving in the illusion
that the only one suffering in the world is me.
If it does nothing else
at least it feeds my ego
to think of myself as some lost cause
and I think if it was not for this belief
in my great suffering,
I might have seen my life for what it has always been.
Realizing the reality of my life would have been greater tragedy for sure
and maybe that’s why I held on so tightly
to the illusion that I was already in one.

“Coffee Shop” – Nayana Nair

I am sipping my 27th cup of coffee
waiting for the shop to get crowded,
so people will not eye me with suspicion or pity.
So I can be in company of people
who have nowhere to go, like me.
For whom, home is just a place you run away from.
I wait for the sun to set.
I wait for the sounds of your approaching footsteps.

I see you make your way
to the table behind me.
I don’t have to look, to know it’s you.
I know you much more than I should.
We have lived together for too long.
And you wouldn’t know me
even if you saw my face.
You have only known yourself,
your world knows nothing but you.

And slowly the seats around you
are filled one by one.
And empty chairs
are being drawn and dragged around you.
And with these strangers
I hear my stories from
your mouth that seem like
the only warmth in their life.
I hear every word you say,
I hear it everyday
waiting at this shop.
To hear, if you ever came to miss me.
Ever said my name with a melancholy
of losing something precious.
If in the stories you tell,
if you could still see me.
If for a moment I could hear you utter word “love”
with my name in its periphery.

I do not love you.
I’m not here to claim you back.
Not here to prove my eternal undying love.
I am just waiting in this cold
to know
that when I sold you my life,
when you used up my story
what you did with me?
Am I there in that heart?
Or at the bottom of some frozen lake?
I need to start looking for it.
And I don’t know where to start.