“Small Impossible Dream” – Nayana Nair

Her floor had always been the color of the season
I remember this, only when I step into the mess of her life.
The spring issues lay scattered like the flowers
The pink, red, yellows, and greens,
women who only know youth,
women who only grow younger
the kind of woman she wanted to be
(what a small impossible dream)
and she almost is.
And now that she can never change
would she be happy?
When/if she comes across her own lifeless eyes in the missing posters
would she be glad to be one of the “sad popular”?
I shatter the home of her missing goldfish
in my haste efforts to pick them up
and put them out of sight- the bundles of glossy paper
that my eyes can’t handle.
I try to put them away,
wanting to throw them away
now that she wouldn’t mind, now that she won’t yell at me
or anyone for taking away too much of her.
I want to try it.
i want to try, so she has no option but to stop me.
“let’s leave her in peace” tells me my moral compass and my grief.
“i don’t want to show her the kind of respect that only dead deserve”
shouts back my anger and my love.
I drop the heaviest bag in this world on her rain soaked bed.
Her last dress, her last chocolate wrapper, her last bus ticket,
her last mistake, her last breath
everything spilling out,
everything ruining the spring that I dreamed for her along with her.

“Sitting across another spring” – Nayana Nair

Spring and love
are running around in a circle
in my mind.
My mind and its gray backdrop
die with a soft giggle.
The sky rains a gentle voice
saying my name on repeat.
A voice I pretend not to know
rings like a telephone in my room
as I stare at it from my bed.

Spring and love
are in my life again
and all I can do is wait for the world
to go back to the time of silence,
so I can go back to nursing my weak heart
and find something easy to do than love.

“my dying love for lemonades and other similar things” – Nayana Nair

In my wardrobe
I have hidden skeletons of you and me
from last year, from the year before,
even the year that never was (as per your memory).

When my head aches from the mention of all the light
I am supposed to see in life

(according to the countless articles on positive thinking),

when I have had enough, but can’t mention it
on the face of well-meaning people

(the handbook of gratitude tells me I should forgive
everything that is done by well meaning folks-
I mean EVERYTHING, have you heard anything more preposterous)

when all the scenarios I used to complain about
become my best case scenario

(it feels like every inch in my home
is occupied with people that I am told not to hate
phew! - you know how forgiveness is not exactly my thing)

when I fail at acting fine, as you taught me to-

I sit among those skeletons
have no care about being with the clothes
that they will never get to wear,
who don’t have a heart to be ruined by.

I try to find comfort
in the thought, in the fact
that an year from now
I will be here,
that I will be the part
that dies by the next spring.

I won’t have to live on to become the part of me
that would hate lemonades, love and laughs.

“Waiting for Winter” – Nayana Nair

if i carry a flower in my heart.
if i could name this flower after myself
and i walk into rooms where i do not belong
and tried to become a garden, become a spring
to all the orbs of winter walking past me,
would they stop and look into my eyes
and see the effort, the sincerity i am putting
to flower one last time?

“this how i want to be frozen in you” – Nayana Nair

wave after wave of cold air,
of sad premonitions
reached us, tried to convince us
that this was a really bad idea.
that on a cold day like this
there were easier ways to find warmth,
ways that would take away no part of us.

and frankly i was afraid.
i stopped maybe a million times on my tracks.
i waited for someone to call me
to remind me of something really urgent
that needed my attention.
i almost prayed for you to give up.

but you kept walking.
you kept repeating that this would be fun.
so even when your hands were shaking
and even when your eyes were red,
i chose not to notice it.
i chose to believe that your heart is stronger,
that you would get us there.

you were always better at pretending for my sake.
you pretended to know all the answers
while i shamelessly hid behind you
when doubts barked at me on streets.
so when we walk on the river that could melt any day, any moment
i wanted you to lean on my heart for once.

my fearful weak heart was the only thing i could give.
i knew my love would last only moments and yours would last an eternity.
but selfishly i held onto you.
so when i kissed you and you smiled,
i want to say i felt sad and guilty,
but i did not.
i was just happy, probably the happiest on this planet
to have touched this sun, this spring, this filler of all voids,
to have become the reason you will break.
i really am the worst.

“A Butterfly in a Concrete World” – Nayana Nair

now i only remember her smile.
it is stuck in my mind like a song.

now all i want is to be the reason
of the this beautiful spring
on the landscape of her face,

just a bird who sits
on a branch of her heart,

just the the light
that passes through her fragile wings.

“Red Valley” – Nayana Nair

every red flower
that couldn’t bloom,
that was denied a spring,
now grows inside us.

we breathe to keep them alive
so their sky remains blue
and they might know
what tomorrow means.

there is a weight on our tiny shoulders
to carry voices that were once locked in vacuum,
to do everything right,
to build greenhouses by our words and intention.

but we don’t need broad strong shoulders
to carry this weight, to keep this valley alive.
we only need to unlearn
every cruelty we have ever been taught.

“Short lived season of comfort” – Nayana Nair

Any seat that I was comfortable occupying
was always unbearably cold.
People were right when they said
that something was not right with me.
For my flesh wanted to become fresh snow,
my bones the lone tree
under which sat my soul-
a child learning to count
the years of cold and whiteness,
an innocent, forgetful, and aging brain
living in a world
with no song, no spring, no rain,
to remind of all that is lost.

“Flower Everyday” – Nayana Nair

Walk towards me
with no hidden agendas,
only openly declared intention to use me
for gaining whatever you want.
Call it love, if only it makes you feel better.
Not for my sake.
For me, it only makes it worse.

x

Walk away
with apparent contempt
at what is left of me,
when everything in me wilted.
I know you can only love the spring and its freshness;
the gentle and the forgiving.
I understand, so leave with a light heart.
It was too much trouble anyway
to flower everyday,
to hide my sorrow every time you looked at me.
My real skin is now almost colored in the darkness
that it was hidden in.

x

Thank you for always holding my sleeve
and not my hands.
Thank you for not staying too long.
Thank you for being forgettable

“For Your Smile” – Nayana Nair

There were far too many things
that I needed to undo
just so I can be someone
who could give you the same joy that
you gave away way to easily
to someone like me.

–

You were so bright
without me.
Your smiles were so huge
when you were far.
That I had to be blind
to not know that I was not made for you.

–

But you were so kind in your love for me,
kind even in your suffering
that the scent of your spring
still lingers in me.

–

It is sad
that I couldn’t give my heart to you.
It is sad
that I am better at giving up than you,
that you are better in finding happiness anywhere you go,
that we change so easily
even when we don’t want to,
even when we believed we won’t.