“Half of my Winters” – Nayana Nair

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I wanted to play this winter song
on the brightest day of spring.
Maybe at least in that way
I will be able to mourn for something
that I should have been happy to leave behind.
But the snowflakes in me
drift into the world
and become butterflies of someone else’s heart.
All my songs now belong to sun,
they belong to scent of summer fruits,
they fall as unpredicted rain
on the windows I closed just in time.
Anyway, I had to learn this sooner or later.
How can I keep believing in my own feelings,
on the things that were supposed to never change, never melt
after losing half of my winters to the green winds of change.
As I place all my “old dreams that don’t suit the new me”
away from my reach,
I wonder if the only way to save the dignity of my old sincerity
is to lock it way from my own skeptical, mocking eyes?

“They go through my closet trying to find me and maybe themselves” – Nayana Nair

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He stepped down from his ‘cloud nine of the day’
as I stepped out from my house made of last drops of rain
and at the intersection of fleeting memories
we fell in love.
That is what I tell my friends
when they ask me about the moment
I was tempted to end the sadness of my life.

I tell them about the words I borrowed from his lips,
his borrowed tongue that helped me eat a bit more.
How I taped his adjectives on my mirror
so that I wouldn’t have to look at myself.

They sit with me on the table
I can’t bear to share with my love.
They stare at me, as I ask them what to wear,
how to hide my poison, how to hide the crack at the elbow,
the bruised collarbone, the split lip,
the ache in my heels, my frayed wings,
my broken voice
and all other reminders of what love has done to me,
and what more love can do, if i just let it in again.

They tell me it is all healed.
They tell me it is all past.
They hold their skin against mine to make me see
that the cracks are all in my mind,
how everyone looks just like me,
how everything wrong with me is now the norm.
And they laughed
when I looked at them with concern.

They dropped me at the restaurant
and vanished at the farthest bend of the road.
As I dragged my feet towards another story
that I will never get to complete,
another tragedy that suited only me,
I looked back and tried to think of all the things
that these kind friends of mine suffered
as they hoped and wished and lied to themselves.
The exceptions they now considered normal,
the wounds they cannot even see,
the pain they cannot call pain,
the love they cannot bear to leave-
I tasted these facts
in every spoon of artificial sweetness
I fed to my mouth that evening.

“Come home” – Nayana Nair

Come home
and lie that you know
how to miss me.
Pass me by a thousand time
in these small rooms,
none which feel like the home I wanted.
Once you told me that the issue is
that I want a lot of things, that I want too much.
That wanting doesn’t suit someone like me.
I find the person I am not in everything you like,
everything that makes you loose control,
everything that forces you to make mistakes.
When I cried the first time,
you told me that you can’t help
that your heart doesn’t say my name.
You told me as an assurance
that your heart doesn’t know love for anyone else either.
I am a person like that, who hoped
that you can be mine as long as you are no one else’s.
I am person like that, who stayed because no one did
and no one would.
A person who cries everyday, only to hear your assurances again,
only to hear the lies that can save my breaking love for you.

“Wish List” – Nayana Nair

what do i want?

snapshots of food i can’t eat?
GIFs and videos to forward?
people to gossip about? people to gossip to?
friends?
false sense of confidence?
a filter for my mouth?
a switch to put my heart to death?
a reality check (altered to suit my expectation)?
amnesia?
counselling sessions?
one more fun quiz to test my mental stability?
therapy?
a diary for my lies,
so that I can keep my mess together,
to continue making mess efficiently?
pills?
a makeover that suits your eyes?
a surgery that can make me look good, make me worth introducing?
someone to stop me?
someone who won’t leave?

“If this was Home” – Nayana Nair

There was never a point of time
when I could sit back and say-
“This is home.
This is where I will always be.
No one can take me away from here.
Here is where I am bound to be.”
Because I could never hold onto anything
even when I wanted to.

***

I was always convinced
that there is something very sinister in me
that would be seen, that would show itself
sooner or later,
that I am not all good.
In fact being good is not in my nature,
but just something I carry out
so that people can try to love me,
a behavior I often dropped
when it suited me.

***

But as much as I am repelled my nature
I also end up finding myself pitiful for how I end up alone
and knowing my flaws
doesn’t make me hate myself enough
to stop me from demanding some consolation from my life
for making it so far.
I want to believe that I at least deserve
a small happiness of my own,
if not the joys of entire world.

“Potential” – Nayana Nair

My every action feels like a potential trigger
for my all-seeing god and his all-criticizing followers
to throw me into the hell that is still under construction.
They are always changing the furniture,
always tearing down new wallpapers,
to suit to life I fear most.
But I can never make up my mind.
Maybe knowing, that the only way to evade their sentence
is to live my own hell.

“Missing and wanting what lies forgotten” – Nayana Nair

For long I have lived
avoiding a lot in life.
The sting of disappointment.
The pointless chatter that becomes
noise, laughter,
a habit. A lovely company.
The colors that didn’t suit me,
colors that I loved just the same.

But now I miss the life in my heart
and the pain that made skies and stars more bright,
that made earth more warm, and love more necessary.

Now I want to dream of happiness again.

“Scavenge” – Nayana Nair

As you scavenge you brain
for some pleasant memories
that would suit
the cold air
fogged up with impending tears.
All you can think of are
the visions
that can scorch the skin of the ‘new you’
until you are nothing but what you were.
And the only thing you can remember
is the one raindrop
that lost itself,
evaporated into the sound
that almost made you cry.