“They were once alive. Only this they are sure of.” – Nayana Nair

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The bodies that were burning
on soft stakes of light last night,
are now moving again.
though unfamiliar with the lightness of cheerless air,
though stranger to the tune of fire in this new land
they move with their heavy hands,
with the spoils of life spilling out of their mouths
with a spectacle hidden under their ribs
They move across the silent narrow fields of blooming coal,
under the gray aging bones of the the fruitless godly plants,
their ears ever aware, ever desperate
for the ringing of a spark,
for the burning, for life to begin.

“For this hell keeps me from breaking for bigger and worse questions” – Nayana Nair

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“We must break our bones and lives
to create another spark –
this is what we owe to this world”
the voice on other side of my dear old wall
told me, told us all again.
And because we must do something about it,
we kept ordering another heart, another mindset,
another way, another “desperate somehow”
till our hands never felt comfortable with anything that is not new.
Would we stop, could we stop
if someone told us
that we are more than our failures?
I wonder even if I could believe those words
I wonder if such words mean much in this world.

Even if there was another place
to start a life that doesn’t run over me every morning
on the tracks that keep changing their shape and place,
tracks where I am just a new layer of metal, another layer of blood
that won’t give up, that cannot die yet,
saying hello to the ones who wake up beside me
as if death is another sleep for which they cannot lose time.
Even in that place, I feel I would suffer trying to define
and find my place even if no one asks me to.