“Erased” – Nayana Nair

I dreamt of a cold day,
of a gray sky,
of your warmth dissolving in air,
of your smile being erased.

–

I lay on your bed
surrounded by, covered in
all the clothes
you won’t ever wear.
I saw myself crying,
refusing to eat or sleep
waiting for a new world to be created
or to leave the world that I am in.

–

But eventually
I woke up,
I cleaned up my room,
I threw out everything
that mattered to me.
I went to shop
for a stomach that knows hunger
a heart that can forget,
a dream, a life without you.
I thought I loved you more than this.

“Collecting Meaning and Beauty” – Nayana Nair

I am stacked with all that belongs to you
and nothing that you have feels yours.
It is as if you were busy finding things
that didn’t look like you
and hoped that if you surrounded yourself
with all kinds of right
then your fault that people talk about
could find a mirror to fix its face.
Or maybe
you just wanted to welcome everyone in this mess,
like you welcomed me,
and leave us in this ocean of objects and words
of overwhelming meaning and beauty.
So that after an absence of million years
that ticking clock forgot to register,
when you come back to find us
and ask us how we take our tea,
we could see your meaningless broken smile
as the only hand that can save us from
losing our sense of self,
losing the idea of what we are
that we had barely put together a downfall ago.

“Ocean” – Nayana Nair

There are more clouds and more rain in world
than we could ever account for in our plans.
The oceans we see today
are graves of people who could never imagine the blue
they are surrounded with today.

“Divide in Two” – Nayana Nair

This day of unimportant advancement
will probably be the one that we will first forget.
Our hearts will pretend to be sad
to have forgotten all such beautiful harmless days.
We move into the next coming second,
dividing ourself in two.
The one left in past
always has the best,
always suffered the worst,
always surrounded by enviable beauty,
always the hero, the victim, the matyr.
While we go on forward selfishly
only taking what we really are.
Selfishly leaving the parts of us
that can be made glorious
only because if they are left behind.

“No Plans” – Nayana Nair

She looks at the clock.
The time tells
in 4 hours her husband has to leave,
she woke up too soon.
She wakes up and looks at the clock again.
In 20 minutes he will need his daily tea,
he sounds bitter all day
if it is not the first thing he sees.
She will have minutes to cook what he likes,
to check his ironed clothes and polished shoes.
Few more seconds till the door closes
leaving her in his house,
surrounded by his belongings,
and with the clock that has no plans for her.
She sighs
and sits till she can’t feel this sting.
She looks at clock once again.
9 hours more for him to come back.

“Whale Songs” – Nayana Nair

My house on hills and its silence
are always occupied in a duel
with the wartime echoes from far away lands,
with the agonizing voices of reality.
Even if I surround my house
with the greenest trees,
place cool streams around.
Even if I cloud my windows
with curtains of smoke.
Even if I barter with life,
even if I am ready to embrace
loneliness for the sake of peace.
In my dreams, filled with whale songs,
there are sorrows
of lives I have cut off myself from.
But I am not someone
who can save people from themselves.
I have no choice but to burn
the letters,
the newspapers,
to keep myself warm and alive.