“There is no undo button in this world” – Nayana Nair

.

I remember you almost every day.
I remember you when I wake up and cannot go back to sleep,
when my skin feels heavy and my eyes melt into tears.
I remember you when I find my way to the impossible happiness
that shouldn’t exist for someone like me.
And in those moments I do something worse-
I end up asking heaven for forgetfulness of some kind.

Even when I know forgetting won’t save you,
apologizing won’t save you,
charity to strangers in your stead won’t save you,
becoming a better person won’t save you.
But even then I remain selfish
Even then I wish for a painless way out.

I become guilty of one more crime
every time I wish to erase the memory
of you falling apart in my hands.
The more I wear my clean clothes,
the more the world believes in the goodness I now have in me;
The more I know that there is no way forward for me
just as there is no way back.

You still remain the unuttered name in my prayers.
And all that my prayers do
is to show me the hurt I can never take back.
The god who refuses to save you
is also the one who keeps me alive.

“I looked for you” – Nayana Nair

.

In the orange forest of drowning suns
I saw your face in the light going out first.
I stood with my empty nets, on a boat, with oars
that won’t budge, won’t sail away from your closing eyes.
I played this only memory I had of you
throughout my journey back.
When my feet found a ground to breathe again,
you had already grown bigger, sadder, scarier,
sorrier presence in my life.

Through my dinner that night,
I thought up names you may have had,
the people you may have loved,
the heartaches you thought would never end.
I thought of how easily things end,
how nothing in our heart
can save our heart from this lonely end.
Were you thankful or sad that you had to know this,
to share this realization
with a stranger made of cold eyes and numb limbs?

That night I looked for your body in every ocean I had in me.
I don’t know what was the point of this search
but I knew I had to do something about you,
that my feet had to walk distances because of you,
that something in me must hurt more than it did now.
That finally I had to die with you,
to know what I don’t know now,
to know even a fraction of your pain.
I was sad and relieved that my need to know you
ended there – with that thought,
with the steps I cannot take.

“I let him drive” – Nayana Nair

I roll down my window
hoping for the first time
that I knew how to drive
so that I wouldn’t have a confused witness
to my impulse of moving forward by a mile
and falling down by a heartbeat.

“Is everything alright?”,
he asks me too often.
I don’t bother to calm him down by saying ‘yes’
as I was doing an hour ago.
Nothing I say can now convince him of my normality.
So I let him drive and let myself collapse.
I bury my face in my lap
and breathe better by suffocating myself a little bit more.

He hums a song that reminds me of the love
that now lives in a country I have not seen
in a life that I will always guess inaccurately
with a girl who has a serious case of klemptomania.
Last time I called the stolen one,
I was given a sorry and an address of a better therapist.

I let my ring burn my heart.
I ask the driver to leave me somewhere no one can find me
knowing he will not, he will take me home
just like he doesn’t everyday,
and he will make sure to greet me
with a kind forgetfulness the next morning.

I wish I had kept more strangers like him in my life,
someone who would worry about me.

“What do you see?” – Nayana Nair

i sat on the cold melting ground,
my hand filled with what would soon be me.
“there is nothing to scavenge here,
there is no hope in such death”,
you said as you placed my hand
on this face that you no longer called yours.
“what do you see?“
(you asked this so often)
“what would you like me to say?“,
were the only words i could say back.
“disappointing isn’t it? we come all this way,
we almost became good enough to live in our dreams
but at the end the only words
we could say with sincerity was sorry“
(it could have been worse, it could have been goodbye)
now that my hands were trapped between yours.
now that you are finally okay with giving up.
my black strands of hair learn to cry,
my shirt learns to turn transparent,
i learn to not love you for your sadness.

“what do you see?“
-a love that would be never returned.

“what do you see?“
-a love that needs nothing in return.

“what do you see?“
-a love who cannot not return back to me.

“You’re right” – Nayana Nair

last night

*i do not like saying last night
because once i only used to speak of it as ‘yesterday night’
until someone told me that it’s wrong, even if it means the same

so last night
i thought how it is something you’d say
“it means the same, but you are wrong”

sample conversation
(based on reality, read too much into lines,
sounds more neutral that it was, maybe not much of reality then)

my heart feels so empty
can’t you love me bit more
while i try to fix myself
i promise you
one day you won’t have to try
but i need you today
i need you to try a bit for me
can you wait a bit for me

you will remain empty till you hold onto yourself only
contrary to your belief
you cannot fill yourself with you
you can only be full of yourself
which might be the case that you fall under
thought i am not professionally trained
to point out the wrong
in people’s heart
but there is so much wrong with you
that i can’t swallow the judgement i have passed on you
i cannot help you grow up
i have a life, i have a dream
i have a need for someone
who can be there for me
without asking such things from me…

and so went our conversation
and obviously you were right
you were right to such an extent
that i would be just making a fool of myself
if i tried to negate the facts

so being the emotional being that i am
i hated you
for being correct, for being so cruel,
for speaking coldly about me,
for letting me know more about-
self-indulgence, self-pity,
victim mentality, and emotional manipulation.
and if i cried now, you’d be proving your point.
if i complained, you’d be writing it down as a case study
to support your claims.

and because of my stupid unrealistic love
and my distorted sense of reality
i sat there in front of you
saying “i am sorry”.

you are right
i need to get rid of what i am
to get anywhere in life,
to get over you.

“I can be your helpless angel” – Nayana Nair

I place broken glass of every color at your feet.
I know how you loved the way they looked.
I will re-create every beauty that you asked for,
I will make them incapable of the danger that you fear.
So that you can walk in this unsettling world,
walk over every broken glass.
I can draw a faceless person to walk by your side,
so you don’t have to feel sorry
when you forget their names
or when they forget you.
It is a world you can never be in
but I will draw it anyway,
because this world that I don’t want for you
is the only world that can make you happy.

“Too Good and Too Sweet” – Nayana Nair

love?
no,
i suffer from no such thing.
even if i do,
that is an easy illness.
there are delusions that i can buy
that can ease all these pains of affection.
if nothing else,
my lover and my heart
knows all the lies, that can put me to sleep
even when my world burns.

loneliness?
maybe,
it could be one of the things that i do not know
how to get around.

self-doubt?
yeah, probably that’s the reason
why i feel lonely even when i am not.
no there are no bad people in my life.
all of them are too good and too sweet.
though there are loud voices of arguments
in the middle of night
and things i wish had never seen or heard,
there are threats of abandonment,
there are days when we end up playing this game
where no can hear what i say-
it is not much fun for me, but i hope they enjoy it.
i need to be a bit fun, to keep everyone around.
but it is nothing serious,
nothing I cannot ignore.

i need to leave though.
uncomfortable?
no,
not at all.
just things that i must get back to,
life that i must live,
people i should bow to,
who never ask me how i’ve been.
so i’ll get going if you don’t mind.
don’t be sorry that you couldn’t help.

“Stop my tears” – Nayana Nair

The lines that you drew to my heart
all of them are dissolving,
so easily.
Is forgetting,
is leaving that easy?
I look at you
and try to find somewhere in you
some feelings for me,
an attachment that could mirror
the state of my heart.

-o-

I am sorry that I am disappointed
when I told you I won’t be.
I am sorry that I cannot rise above
this weakness that love brings back in me.
But what is the alternative?
-the lonely days
-the days spent hating the world
-days spent hating the one I love
-days spent in regret
-days spent breaking those whom I can touch but never love
-days spent waiting for you to come back
and meanwhile converting every hour of my suffering
into an life of anger
that you must bear
even if you return
I hate them.
I hate all these alternative.

-o-

I have no option but to hold you
and hope that after all this time
maybe a little part of you would stay,
if only for the sake of stopping my tears.

“Your News” – Nayana Nair

Another happy news
floats in the periphery of my vision.

-x-

Though it holds the love of those
who have found something to love,
something to live for-
it makes me restless.

I want to open these envelopes
and mean it
when i tell you
how happy I am for you,
but I am not.

-x-

I am sorry but I can’t be happy for you
because in your every word
that you have inked with excitement,
I am reminded that
I have never seen these same color in my own life.

When your letters find me,
they find me too broken.
I am sorry, I have lost too much of me already
and can no longer give you anything but empty words.

-x-

Live well dear.
Live your dream far away from me.
It will keep your happiness intact
and my bubble of ignorance unharmed.

-x-

One day
(if ever)
when I am no longer walking in my own darkness,
I will find you
and I will try to be the friend that you deserved to have.
But till then
I can only keep these letters unopened
and my happiness for you undelivered.

“The Usual” – Nayana Nair

Sure I don’t feel hollow for the every minute we don’t speak.
Sure I don’t wait for your messages when I am with friends.
And I don’t feel weak
even when your anger breaks my back
and your love breaks my heart.

You told me something was wrong with me
and this is not how people usually love.
They find ways to be with each other
and miss everything they had together,
even with the distance of few hours.

You told me, so I doubted.
I doubted the way I loved.
I doubted I knew what I feel and how I feel,
but after putting myself under the heat of
uncomfortable observation
and comparing what I was to every girl you liked.

And now I can assure you
that I love you and I miss you
but just not the way you’d like.
For every hero that walks this earth,
that shines on screens and stories
takes up your face
and every quote of love gone good and love gone bad
brings up our image.

But my kind of love knows not how to turn away from
everything I have always loved
(even my loneliness)
just because I love you.
So sorry for not being the usual.
Sorry for being this weak.