“Any time now” – Nayana Nair

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“Irrespective of what has happened, I know happiness.
I do not remember the sadness as vividly
as those sentimental singers do. I don’t know the pain
that lasts eternities. I know of a happiness that cannot be lost.”
This is what I say when I meet my past.
This is what I say when I step into the world
where the past doesn’t pass by like it should.

I say this
because I cannot say
I am afraid of
because once___________________________
and till now it haunts me.

When___________________________________,
I have to strain myself, I have to forget myself.
Before someone tells me “This is life. Get used to this.”,
before they tell me about “the worst that can happen”,
I have to get out of my body,
I have to hide my remaining self in the corners I won’t fit.

I have to force myself not to throw up
as ___________________________________
_______________________________________,
as I see from far away
my body smile at all that is wrong.

I smile on my walk to the main road, I smile on my ride back home.
I hum a little joyful song as I close the door,
the same damn song I have hidden behind all this time.
On my warm bed, I lie facing myself
waiting for the tears
that should have arrived by now.
I wait for the breaking to happen,
so that I can put myself back,
so that I can suck out this poison again.

But the tears, the breaking, the moment of honesty,
the crying without knowing why
doesn’t happen.
And I realize, I fear that now ______________
has become a part of me, a natural pain.
Now
there is no way I can claim the body of the one
I cannot recognize.

I look at ceiling and hold onto the tremor of this stranger’s heart
that should have been me.
In those restless heartbeats, there is hope, there is fear,
there is anger, there is a me that has to say meaningless words
like “a happiness that cannot be lost” to soothe this world,
so that it won’t take away anything more of me.

“Millimeters” – Nayana Nair

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I folded her note and placed it carefully in my wallet. And I smiled. I told her something I do not remember now. It was something sweet, something weird, because that was the only sort of thing that could make her smile like that.

I folded her smile and placed it carefully in my wallet. And I smiled for a bit. I smiled till I saw the crease that now divided her in half. Trying to ignore the apparition of her breaking, trying to ignore my guilty heart, I gave her few words to smile about. She smiled as if she knew nothing. She smiled as if she knew everything that could ever be hidden in my heart.

I folded her forgiveness and placed it in my wallet. I smiled apologetically. She smiled back as if this is what love was. I recited to her all her favorite promises, probably to soothe my own heart.

I folded another note of forgiveness, and another, and another. The thickness of my wallet and her cracks increased by millimeters, they always walked hand in hand, unlike us. I bought her new flowers and she bought me new wallets. With a smile she told me something untrue about us, something that she could believe in. Maybe she waited for me to tell her something true for once.

But I folded every truth about us and hid it in the memories we won’t find our way back to. And just when I thought nothing can go wrong. I realized that I had also left her at that place where I was not allowed to live. She stared out and smiled from the warm rooms of love, far away from my unlovable heart.

“A Somewhat Lilac Sky” – Nayana Nair

Now that I am made of evening skies,
if I move into that night,
I can’t ever return.
The one who tastes the morning sun,
the one who kisses your lips,
the one who somehow lives on
won’t be me.
So let me remain this beautiful.
Let us stop here.
The snow would be here soon
and time would bring us
small doses of the soothing forgetfulness.
See how you start to love me again
when your heaven and your heart
give up on all their rules.

“Soft Soil” – Nayana Nair

you are now
just a butterfly
in the unruly garden of my life.

you were once the laughter in our home.
your hands were once as warm as mine.
you were so many things,
the one who knew how to make everyone smile,
the one who could soothe my heart
with a kind understanding glance,
the one who never cried
(now I guess you must have cried,
knowing how you left us here like this).

they told me
you were too weak to live.
i gulped down their answer
even when i knew they were lying.
i was afraid of knowing the real reasons,
i was afraid of knowing what I had overlooked.

the soil was so soft in my hand,
the day they buried you.
i cried through my meals for days.
no one consoled me.
no one told me things will get better.
no one told me to grow up.
and something told me
i would never grow up.

“Indifferent Green” – Nayana Nair

The indifferent green around me
soothes my heart.
It has nothing against me
and I do not have to be wary
of all that it can do,
and all that it can say
to shift the levels
of what is tolerable and
what I should put up with.
I can already hear them saying
that I am hiding.
I can hear them saying worse things.
Do you know what I find scary
that even in hiding, I know what they will say
and I care for what they will think,
even if I don’t care about them,
even if they don’t care about me.

“What went wrong” – Nayana Nair

Let us not delve into the question
of what went wrong.
I have loved heartache
even as I was trying to run away from it.
I have missed the mess my life was
when I was granted the calm
that I begged for.
Everything I wanted
could never soothe my wounds.
Everything I have loved
was never good for me.
I guess somewhere in my life
I grew numb to kindness and care.
Somewhere in my life
I started mistaking pain for love.
All things were meant to go wrong from there.

“Step into the memory” – Nayana Nair

I sing them a song
in the voice that may soothe their hearts
but fills me with feelings
which are very similar to words
like choke, suffocation and breathlessness.
Though you might not think twice about it,
I know what I have done.
I have walked into the prison that my life was.
But I love myself for taking that step
into the memory of darkness
that cannot actually hurt me.
It is just remains of the hurt that was.
But here I also find remains of ‘me’ that was.
And I am happy, for I know
rarely do people get chance
to become what they were, even for a minute.