“As long as I had love” – Nayana Nair

The air fills my lungs,
and drowns me
and now I remembering things that I shouldn’t
I am remembering every moment of my incomplete death.
Someone cuts a window in my chest,
rips into pieces the words that shouldn’t get out.
A rough skin holds me a bit too long
with a bit too much force,
a bit too much neglect.
“ohhh…it was not love after all“,
I remember thinking this
as I closed my eyes wanting to forget this person
who has taken half of my life, so easily.
“For a brief moment I was loved“,
I wanted to say this at least.
I held on so long only for that sake.
But now I must breathe in the air
that I once thought I didn’t need as long as I had love.

“I didn’t mean it” – Nayana Nair

I did mean it all,
I just didn’t want you to know.
My momentary courage-
the result of my long sleepless nights,
let’s agree to call it my foolishness.
For I won’t do anything as preposterous as that ever again.
I won’t expect much from you again,
not because I was at wrong.

Even though it was the only thing I could do,
I regret it so much.
I hate myself for trying to believe in you,
for pushing myself to do the right thing
for your sake.

As always you eat fast and cut me off.
As always you have somewhere to go.
There are too many people whom you must keep happy.
Today I won’t throw everything on my plate for you.
I won’t come to door to see your cold back.

I wish I could go back to the dreams
where I told you about my life, about my pain
and you held me as I cried,
where you took me to the doors of my new life.
But instead all I see in every face is your face.
In your face all I see is my pathetic self
who wanted to lean on someone like you.

“In the Image of” – Nayana Nair

I am not talking about
enhancing my likability here.
But just to be taken seriously
I need to like certain things,
I need to act certain way.
I need to fill forms
whenever I meet someone new,
whenever I meet them again.

Am I capable? Am I an intellectual (of the right kind)?
Am I still childish?
Am I still unable to follow the conversation
that is not spoken in the language I follow?
Am I still reluctant to give up on all the things
that are no longer relevant.
Am I now ready to listen and only listen
to take in
the version of a world that is more widely accepted.
Am I finally aligned with the opinions, interests
and common hatred that bonds us?
Have I grown weak and weary
of the silence that I am put through?
Have I realized what I could do, whom all I can befriend
if I break myself in image of my oppressor?

“Hiding” – Nayana Nair

The noise of the crumpled tissues walked upon
fills me up again.
Without the colors of reasons or pain
that once made it unbearable,
I envy that me who could be so passionately
sad for the someone else
or even for myself.
Now the the rivers of concern run beneath the surface of my heart
almost lost, in hiding.
(Or am I the one in hiding.)

And now I can finally be almost happy in life.

“Asking for More” – Nayana Nair

The lost all gather
at the same door as I.
They shout, yell and cry.
Praise and tell lies.
To be taken in.
To be cared for.
To be chosen.
To be looked at, even once.

Do they also feel smaller
for standing here and waiting,
for asking things whose void eats you up.
This void
that has a fondness, an appetite
for the ones who can’t unlearn caring.
Which becomes bigger
feasting on the silent phone,
on unifinished conversations,
on the hollow rumours, on the dirt on your name,
smeared by people
who know better
but continue to do worse.

The void for things,
that even when attained,
outgrows the want that creates it.
Is there anyone
who has got what he asked
and stopped asking for more.
Who has found himself
by asking and pleading for acceptance,
by being nice and patient,
by cutting themselves up
to fit the template
of someone else’s ever growing void.

“Make you mine” – Nayana Nair

I believe that once
you had the chance to be true to someone.
I feel that someone is not me.
I know that whatever aches in you
was a wound that you chose to forget,
that wound carries a name unfamiliar to me.
I cannot hold your promises
when my hands are full of doubts.
I try to etch my name on your heart.
I see you bleed
and drained of love.
I see my hands stained
with the sleep that you have lost.
Yet no brutality, no compassion
can make you mine.
This is not what love was supposed to be.

“The Idea of Something More” – Nayana Nair

My frail body and mind
were nothing more than what it was intended for.
And I was no better than any other
body barely keeping itself alive.
And though I was fed again and again
the idea of being something more,
being someone more.
In moments like these
I am reduced by my sorrows
to the helpless creature
we all know we are.

“Always Afraid” – Nayana Nair

Even as we wait we wonder,
could we ever know you more
than what you have left behind?
Knowing that they were the parts of you
that you most hated
and least loved.
We are not sure whom we are waiting for.
We are always afraid,
that your weakness would be more beautiful than you.
We are afraid
for we are yet to know the one,
whom we already love.

“Beyond Repair” – Nayana Nair

At some place in my life I realized that
I was ruined beyond repair.
And when I was done with all the crying,
with all the cursing,
and being therapist
to the girl that I was .
I grew up enough
to know,
that even if I can’t be what I was,
I can still be someone.
No one had to fix me.
Someone just had to show me, that it can be done.
And all the hope, that I thought was lost,
was back in the air that once seemed suffocating.

“Crises” – Nayana Nair

The small crises
of my day-to-day life that
seem like disaster,
were nothing more than
my heart rebelling against my heart.
Of me fighting myself,
Of me looking at myself,
mocking at myself,
crying with myself.
Of accepting the solitude I had subjected myself to.
Of not knowing a way out of it.
Of thinking that if I could be miserable enough
someone might rescue me.
And finally accepting the life
I have shared with no one else
but me.