“You look at the sun, the way I look at snow” – Nayana Nair

.

The bruising purple song,
the decay of dear flowers,
the gifts given as settlements
in nasty goodbyes- this morning
you tie these new shadows
on your neck- your neck now hidden,
your neck otherwise always growing
new bones in new odd ways,
your neck otherwise a monster
like the rest of you.
You – otherwise a beautiful
heroic animal of rage,
today you look normal
with your clever violence.
Today you look like the portrait
that you colored red last summer
because it made you sick
to look at a sadness so proud.
You tell me about graphite and fire,
how you could relate a bit more to graphite
if it knew to bleed better, leaving not crumbs
but organs made of earth’s belly. If only fire down there
knew of this surface filled only with examples
and exhibits of mortality,
then we could all cry together, you say.
Your hands softly tosses away
something crucial of you in the melting pool
of men now made more of sun and less of snow.
You dip your cold hand in the furnace of spring
and ask me if I can see it as well. I do.
I see life changing the molecules of my loves
to something neat, something that soon will outgrow me,
something I will now fear tainting.
I see my love,
but I am sure we are not seeing the same thing.

“The snow continues to pile as our breath struggles to remember life” – Nayana Nair

.

The walls gave birth to new ghosts
and the chill in our lungs
grew as a garden of hyacinth.
Whatever remained of our suns
was now dying with us.
“Give in to the end with grace”
said a detached cold voice on screen.

So in my remaining breaths
I tried to write something wise about life
but somehow it all came back
to those few names
repeated again and again,
it somehow came back to not wanting to die.

I looked at her across the room
as she ran her fingers through the spread of cards
with a smile that still brushed against my heart
like a butterfly with one wing of metal
and other made of light.
It doesn’t make sense that this all has to end.

Someone out there in the snow
continued to sing about heartbreaks
and the glory of this release
and yet what wouldn’t I give
only to feel another despair of love
if that is how she could live a little more in me.

“the bridges float on the horizons we have lost” – Nayana Nair

.

the bird of possibility, decorated with arrows,
sits on our broken shoulders
and asks us what we see there
there – where we are not

there?

there…

something fragile still sleeps in us

our hands reach out to always find a sure warmth

something made of feathers hugs us back

a gentle sun kisses our wearied eyelids

and yet the dream doesn’t dissolve in your hand

“To stay” – Nayana Nair

.

The city of wax and sun was,
for the lack of better words,
like living in a home that will vanish
and does vanish-
the vanishing always a spectacle and a sorrow.
The nights were all about
breathing religiously every second
to catch a brick, a bell, a railing to hold onto,
the dear gods carved in stones,
the plate touched by my mother.
Breathing in again and again
and coming up all empty,
we used to wait for sun and dread its heat
always worried and excited
about the drops and vapors we would catch
and all that we were going to lose.
Since nothing apart from the breathing would survive,
since the new-born stone and grass
knew nothing of death or its mark,
there never was a funeral,
no graves, no photographs to devote our tears to.
All our oceans would rise within us
falling at the steps, the stones, the memories
of everything that cannot prove its reason to stay
anymore.

“changing light bulbs” – Nayana Nair

.

this tiny sun,
this lovely creation
how it shines, and how it dies.
it flickers like a dying trapped firefly.
it raises a lightning on our pages
that we have spread out to dream on.
we pull and drag a tiny sleeping tree
that we never sit on
and find a way to rests it against the sky-
this sky that is almost always falling down.
i climb without looking back
for i know you are holding my ground.
as another cloud rushes past my cheeks,
as i pluck another proof of death ,
i feel your fingers lingering on my ankles.
i feel the first storm of spring in my mind.
i look down at you and smile
and you smile back
as you take the dead orb
and sad prophesies from my hands
and hand me a new sun,
the one that you brought on your way back from work
just because you saw me look at the fading light with worry last night.
my tiny sun, how can you love me like that?
you look at me and give a tiny clap
the moment i am done placing the sun back in the sky,
you look at me as if i invented life.
even if you are mistaken,
it is beautiful though
to see you wearing your silly delicate beliefs
only for me to see.

“Something good”- Nayana Nair

.

Even when I have almost
found my head,
though I have finally
lost my madness,
the flowers, these red flowers of blood
still haven’t withered.
This heaven, that has only place for me,
hasn’t yet been burnt.
There is the earth that is yet to be found.
There is a sun that needs to forget the feeling
of being drunk on the dark.
There are walls that must be washed and washed
till they can be painted over with warmth.
So wait a bit,
I will let you in.
I will let my heart love,
once I become someone you can love.
Once I become
someone who can see love as something good.

“When will I ever learn to see a human as a human, nothing more, nothing less” – Nayana Nair

.

A boy covered in white fur,
and a silent dear pet
made of breaking human skin-
they stand together at my horizon.
They float together,
they move into the melting sun.
They melt and become one with
everything I have lost.
They color everything I am yet to lose.

I call out to them
but only wrong names,
only these wretched wrong names
come out of my cursed bleeding mouth.
I call out the names they don’t understand.
No one gets the broken syllables
they stand for in my heart.
“come back my innocence, come back my truth”,
but they won’t hear.
Those words mean nothing to them.
That’s how things should be,
even if it doesn’t make me glad.

My view and my ideas of them are bound to me,
everything false sticks to my skin.
They can’t chase them
out there.
What a thing to be thankful for!
They won’t learn more reasons to hate me.
Reasons I deserve to be hated for.
My own hate is enough for me.
What a contentment have I laughably found now!

“What I want to say, what I want to ask is something else” – Nayana Nair

.

Today I am glowing with your gentleness –
the miracle that I thought was lost for good.
Today all the songs are about
the open sky of your heart,
about the wind that blew through me to you,
through the rooms of your childhood,
through the ghosts in my eyes which you could see too,
through your ruffling shirt made of bluest words
enveloping me, making a new sun for me
with the easy way you leaned in,
with the kiss that reached me,
even in all my hiding places.
So sad no lips were involved, yet so beautiful
that I can remember it without
the memory and weight of flesh.
It pains me somedays, somedays makes me regret
all the things that vanished, all the good things
that almost happened, but didn’t.
But mostly it makes me proud
that I used up all my beautiful dreams on you.
Your smile, that I have never seen
but only felt in words,
was the most beautiful smile of this world.
You were more dear to me
than most of the world that I got to keep.
How sad
that I never got to tell you this.

“This is my thrashing around. This is my thank you.” – Nayana Nair

.

Ice floats and ships sink
but the absolutes end here.
For this red sun, that seems
to sink together with us all,
is just playing a kind game.
It is will be fine. Just fine.
It will pretend to die
just for our sake.
Just like how it pretends to be born
so that we don’t feel alone.

It doesn’t know yet, that we feel lonely
in spite of that. That there are things in life
that can make us forget, that can cancel
the sunshine and the storms. There are soft things
that gets trodden upon,
there is a kindness that we can’t value as humans
because it doesn’t come from the one we want.
There are things with weight and never leave our heart-
Like love, like death, like subjective harshness of this world.
Like the unnamed thing eating our dreams,
Like the unmanned vehicle of luck running over us-
leaving us alive everytime.
The friend who forgets us so often
that we believe that we are ghosts, the rain of care
that we try to predict in the eyes of cold lover,
the floating bodies that we can’t recognize.
But we cry and in our tears we feel the remains
of the memory that we can’t access.
we only feel we must cry or we will regret.

So dear sun
forgive us if we don’t return your smile
as we thrash around breathless in water,
as we demand answers in a voice weathered by tears.
Forgive us if we forget
that unlike us you will probably die alone.
Things get forgotten
important things like you and the other members
of your life-filled-lifeless club.
That’s just how we are
but we realize it sooner or later what they were.

I can recall the days when i knew you tried to save me.
You almost succeeded. You were beautiful
even when my life was not. But even that helps.
Thank you.
We may not say it that much, but we have written a lot about you
in the papers you’ll never read.
I hope when you die the papers that are filled with your beauty
can burn to give you a few more breaths.
I hope it helps even though it won’t.

“This ground that we stand upon” – Nayana Nair

.

Dear &^%$,

Have you found a way
to leave everything
that you call your ground-
your ground of anger,
of rusting armour of indifference,
of the trauma the heartless giants planted in your heart,
the compass that shows all the wrong directions
and always takes you to the nearest cliff, again and again.
Have you found a way to be better, to live better?
I haven’t yet.

Yesterday I listened to a stranger talk for hours
about how it can be done,
how it will end when we want it to.
It made me wonder if maybe we are not yet ready
for this groundless life.
Maybe that is our only issue.

All that can save us is so temporary, so transient.
Yet the thing that ruins us, is ours to keep-
not like the sun, but like the demon that needs our skin to live.
I wonder if we just need to be needed that badly.
Is that why we choose to cry than to change?
Is that why we choose to hold onto the wave that is drowning us-
just because it is here, because it is ours till it kills us.
Among many other things I also wonder what made us like this.
To be honest I am afraid to know.

What are you afraid of today?
Do let me know.

Yours,
$%^&