“mornings break us apart again” – Nayana Nair

she traced the light on my chest
pulled out everything that stung-
the swings, my feet,
the shadow i decided no longer to play with.

the comparision table of veins and arteries
copied into my notebook.
the eraser and pencil that helped me document
in those tables my lackings compared to everyone else.

a page torn, and then another, and then another.
pages that learnt immortality by choosing my heart as home.

she stayed up nights trying to free me
as i stuggled and begged not to empty me.
she smiled and said the words she didn’t mean,
words that i wanted to hear from someone, anyone.

so i slept because she couldn’t be stopped.
“leave me alone” now hurt me more than her.
i opened my eyes and cried
for her work was done,
now i was no one, now nothing was mine,
not even my pain, not even her.

she dusted her cobweb skirt,
placed a kiss on my forehead
and told me to breathe,
breathe in everything
that i didn’t think i had the right to.

she told me to breathe
and to never forget what suffocation felt like.
it helps in becoming kind, she said.

as she wiped clean her traces from my life,
i felt better, again i was full.
i was full of her, of this love that won’t work out.
being full of her, i refused to breathe,
because i wanted to keep it that way.

“Anomaly of the Art Class” – Nayana Nair

I row my heart
to the moon you drew,
the one you colored in green
ignoring every reality,
for which you got an D,
for which I lost a part of me.

I no longer hold onto the poems filled with dread-
dread of rejection, of future, of finding myself eventually broken.
I see something that you have left behind in me.
Something that still burns, still lives for a reason.
Something that is much more than an art class with disappointed teacher.
Something that helped me hug back the blue parts of me.

I row my heart
to the moon you drew,
to the world I traced
with my own brave hands.

“Your Skin, My Words” – Nayana Nair

I took my rusted pen, my useless words
and tried to write something beautiful for you.
Words filled with my love,
words that tasted
like all your favorite forgotten dreams.
But I found myself tracing
the only words on your skin.
I ended up rewriting your sorrow.
I ended becoming the face of your fears.

“All the talk about survival” – Nayana Nair

I walking around this planet
talking about survival
as if I actually lived to survive.
I didn’t.
There are many who do
but they are not the ones who are filling the world
with papers filled reeking of envy and tears.
The ones who are really desperate,
who really fear extinction-
disappear as they fear
without leaving a trace of the hurt
that had so engulfed them.

~

I think I have it better.
I know I have it easy.
My pain though has become my life long mission
it only drinks me up sip by sip,
never finishing me in one gulp
but to leave me alive and thriving in the illusion
that the only one suffering in the world is me.
If it does nothing else
at least it feeds my ego
to think of myself as some lost cause
and I think if it was not for this belief
in my great suffering,
I might have seen my life for what it has always been.
Realizing the reality of my life would have been greater tragedy for sure
and maybe that’s why I held on so tightly
to the illusion that I was already in one.

“What I Remember (3)” – Nayana Nair

 

somehow that is where i always found myself.
crushed between the expectation that i had from myself,
even if these expectation in no way could be ever called achievement,
even if i could fulfill them.
maybe that is precisely why i felt
so crushed when my plans didn’t work out.
it was not because i asked for something small
and didn’t get it.
but because even though i had set such
an easy goal to achieve
i was not able to reach it.
the problem with those small goals were
that they didn’t exist because i was humble
or because i didn’t need much in life, or was satisfied easily.
i set them up within reason.
i set them up within my reach.
i found them as something that could be a stepping stone for me,
as something small that i can hold in my hand
wherever i went
to remind myself
that i am capable of something,
even if it is not something great.
and that’s why i used to be frustrated with myself
that i was not even capable of the minimum.
i could say it is almost in past though.
this calculation of what i could do,
finding something smaller than my assumption of my capability,
failing at it in epic way,
and reducing my own worth in my eyes.
i can say it is in my past
because now the circle of what i can do
is so small
that it has only space for me to stand.
that would explain by blues.
that would explain a lot of feelings
whose origin i can’t seem to trace these days.
that would explain why i am no longer afraid of dreaming
but incapable of doing so.
because all my efforts are spent on keeping my feet firm on this ground
which i now know is too easy to loose.

“The Little Blood I Have” – Nayana Nair

I looked up at the confused giants
and puzzled at their ugly voices
and deformed faces,
how they hold onto stones and branches
how they hold onto papers,
and threw each other off cliffs.
But what made me sadder was
that no one who was thrown off those cliffs ever died.
They just keep coming back
looking a bit different, speaking more funnier
and acting more mean
and throwing each others down again.
No one ever died here.
Everyone lived and everyone wanted all this to end
but no one wished it more than me.
I was made to believe that the little blood I have in me
is their doing, is their gift.
I wonder how much time it would take
to empty myself from the traces of this violence
and memories of people I grew up calling my family.

“Eroding Structures” – Nayana Nair

I checked my diaries
for the hints of regrets,
for the eroding structures of demands
I once made from life.
I checked my skin for the trace of scars-
the remains of the unreasonable
yet necessary decisions.
The sharp bleeding memory
of the blade,
of the hatred I inflicted on myself.
I checked the outline of my mother’s lips
do they finally approve of what I am.
While I eat all three meals
that were supposed to keep me full,
I wait for the forgiveness that never comes.
The pardon
that my heart
(half eaten by my self loathing)
can never grant.

“Trace” – Nayana Nair

I will trace your tears
through the meteor shower,
through the footsteps that you followed,
through the hands that you held,
through the hearts that you broke,
through the marks on your skin,
through the lost and found columns,
through the moist flower placed in you books,
through that crossed out name, on every page.
I will trace your tears
that will lead back to me.
And say what needs to be said.
An apology.
An apology that you never got.
An apology that you deserved.