“Your Cactus” – Nayana Nair

i never learnt about gardening, nor about patience, nor about caring,
nor about looking after anything that doesn’t speak, doesn’t complain,
doesn’t tell me in plain words how i am terrible, how i mistakes make me
even if those mistakes are not mine.

i wish i was blind, i wish i was mute,
i wish i was the cactus in your bedroom.
i wish i was the books you didn’t read but can’t throw away.
i wish i could stop wanting to be a decoration in your life.
i wish i could stay human and stay in love at the same time.

in my room
i close my eyes, and find myself with you.
it must be dream, i wish it was.
for here you don’t cry because of me,
don’t have to tear yourself up just to be nice to me.
i wish it was a dream
because here i have forgotten to tell you
that i can’t love anything that loves me back.
i wish you stop making my heart ache with your sincerity.
i wish i woke up
before you sacrifice anything more than you already have.

“Through the End” – Nayana Nair

However convenient it is to pretend,
but we are not the types that go into hibernation
and expect life to continue where we left it.
Though there is a part of us
that wants to hide ourselves into any warm embrace
and rely on darkness for safekeeping our innocence.
There is also a part of us
that wants to stay and see through the end,
however terrible and heart-breaking that maybe.
We fear not knowing
as much as
living alongside a truth not and knowing its name.

Abstraction

“It is terrible to destroy a person’s picture of himself in the interests of truth or some other abstraction.”

― Doris Lessing