“and soon it will be time” – Nayana Nair

.

in her two storey house
my doll sleeps on her silk sheets
with a knife resting beside her.
it shines
as if newly delivered and never used,
as if sharpened hundred times,
as if it has known the pain of blood every night,
every night cleaned
under the deafening noise of running tap water.
the metal mixes with her fears, with her trembling hands.
something again slips from her grasp.
and now it is time for tears,
and it will be soon time
for cycles of search and paranoia.
there is a time for every madness in her mind.
there is always a calm wait
before she reaches the next stage of hopelessness.
there is always a party hosted at the dead end of her lives
where she takes another drink,
and finds hands filled with warmth
and eyes that like the color of her healing skin,
the burned tips of her tongue, and her swallowed words equally.
but someone utters the wrong word,
looks at her the wrong way,
leaves the taps water, filled with smell of blood,
running in her mind again,
and again she lunges for the
the knife that fits in her hand better than any hope
and again she ends the song of her lover,
again she wakes up alone.

“The Light of White Tulips” – Nayana Nair

.

From the lowest branch
of the falling tree
I looked up
and heard someone laugh.

I have been reborn thousand times after that
but still
as I walk on the charcoal roads
lined with white tulips
that never light up,
as my foot slips
I hear that laugh again.

I hear it
when I cook food
and end up staring a bit too long at the flame,
when the smoke that kills, coats everything
that fills my stomach.

It is stuck in my heart, the violence of the end.
The bluest sky, the sweetest wind,
the flying songs, and my muffled cries-
crystallized as one.
One tiny map, that tells no directions,
forever stuck in the corner of my eye.

It plays like a record, plays hide and seek.
It is a play that ends
with the stories breaking into me.

“harmless” – Nayana Nair

i slipped, fell, and cut my skin.
i didn’t want to care, but i did.
i couldn’t help but feel sorry for all the harmless things
that ended up being cursed at, blamed for
only because i ran towards them
with all that i had in me.
i recalled the formula of impact,
that never meant so much to me
till i realized that I also have a body
that follows every law ordained by nature.
that just because i can imagine and dream an eternity,
doesn’t make me or my feelings eternal.
i didn’t want to care about such things, but i did.
i cared so much that it hurt, even when it should’t.

“Crutch” – Nayana Nair

I let your hand become my crutch.
I let your feelings for me
become a means of my own validation.
I let “love” slip
from my mind.
Being the center
of your tiny universe
has ruined me, has undone my heart.
You are too close, too close to be seen
or to be cared for.
Each morning your face reminds me
how you are become one step closer
to achieving invisibility in my eyes.
“i cannot imagine not being your everything”
is not the same as “i love you”.
I wonder if you know that.
I wonder if you know
that this difference
of what I feel
and what I should
is killing anything humane left in me.

“What I Remember (24)” – Nayana Nair

It is time to go out into the world.

It is time that I try hard to get my heart broken
and pretend that it is happening for the first time,

to claim that I trusted blindly
knowing it is not something I am capable of,

to fit my body awkwardly
in the kind of life that people call ‘life’

to find words, to practice the new lingo
that can make something about me relatable,
so that my skin soaked in a tiring tale of sadness
doesn’t make me an alien,

to fill me up again with pictures
of parks, cafes, malls, and roads filled with people
who supposedly like each other,
if not a lot,
then at least enough to not let their ailing self
ruin the perfect moment, the perfect teamwork, the perfect promise.
(Perfection that relies on someone else
doesn’t sit well with me.)

It is time I find something new
that I cannot be or cannot have
before I lock myself up again
for next hundred heart years.

So while I am out to find something to write about and hurt about
miss me my cell,
pray for me.
I am afraid that once I am surrounded by all
that I have learned not to want,
I might start to hope again.
I might slip again.
I might forget to see the distance that I carry in me
and get disappointed by the doors that I can’t reach.

“All the Ends that pass me by” – Nayana Nair

The shoes I am wearing
are wearing thin.
I feel my clothes trying,
trying hard to slip out of me
and I don’t try to hold onto them.
That is how I have always been.

I see an appproaching death,
the sihouette of another ending
that I won’t be able to take
and I order another drink,
I put down the book
that was getting a bit more real
that I expected it to be,
and I wait with open eyes
to witness the truth of every undoing
that is in my fate.

This is me-
the one who cries absurdly
at a broken sole, at my frayed edges,
at a day-long, a month-long, an year-short love,
the one who tries to mean “till the end”.

The one who can only smile
when called cruel and cold-
that is also me.

“Till I become half of what I was” – Nayana Nair

The soap slips through my fingers
and falls onto the floor
(a floor that in my mind is never clean enough).
I wash the soap vigorously,
till it becomes half of what it was.
My teachers would be proud
to know that I take germs somewhat seriously even now.
Even now, when I am sure of only of my loneliness*,
such ghosts of primary school science don’t leave me alone.

*My hands are too small, I have been told many a times. Maybe that’s why this happens so often. But still I guess it happens to all. I can never know for sure though. No one I have ever met talks of the soaps that slip. Maybe that shows the state of my friendships, how I end up feeling weird, feeling alone about the things, in experiences that are supposed to be normal and common.

“Estranged” – Nayana Nair

when you slipped into my arms
and tried to tell me stories
in your broken language,
when you got all your numbers wrong,
when you touched my face
with your tiny hands,
i almost forgot
that you are not mine.

i shouldn’t have.

“Slip every time” – Nayana Nair

There is one step
where I slip every time.
And just because I know now to jump across it,
doesn’t mean it ceased to exist.
It just means I have to keep reminding myself
what to avoid.
Sadly, the trivial betrayals and their deeper hurt
doesn’t reform my trusting heart.
My aloofness is just a way to ensure
that others don’t know of this.

“Effortless” – Nayana Nair

On the other side of this puddle,
where my feet is caught,
is the ocean of joy
in which I wandered
only to be caught in the hook of the sadness
that slips into my wound so effortlessly
that the pain felt like love,
because it felt like the only thing that I could call as mine.