“Pamphlets” – Nayana Nair

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In the age of breaking,
all my classmates
swarmed to the dead pools in summer.
They ironed their skin with the heat I couldn’t bear.
With a smudged color on their lips,
their never resting pupils,
the pamphlets of their anxious laughter
that they passed to each other,
the crumpled remains they walked upon
they looked like imitations of greek statues
and love stories gone wrong.
They looked like people who joke about drowning and dying
and the love that killed them in their sleep.
“They are too young to know about love and pain”
someone said on TV,
even as we built an ugliest everlasting fire
out of the promises the world couldn’t keep.

“Undying” – Nayana Nair

The brightest star of my childhood dreams
sits on the set of a sitcom
and tells jokes about me.
He wins few hearts and breaks few guitars-
becomes an artist of some kind.
He fills the screens with the love he only spoke about.
I become a bit more irrational in his stories
sometimes so much, that I feel no wonder
when he forgets who I really am.
It feels natural when I don’t look at him
when I talk of love, or when I don’t talk about myself.
I trace the distance between the dreams that he had
and the person he has become
and find myself stuck between choosing and abandoning
the same person with different heart.
How helplessly we have drifted to a life
where our best doesn’t do much,
where my undying love only causes me pain,
where your eyes filled with dream only makes you blind,
where the death of our love and the tear from my eyes
are the only thing that gets you closer to what you want.

“I don’t want to be right anymore” – Nayana Nair

I wonder
‘me being right’
at what point of time it became synonymous
to finding out that his heart is empty-
my name washed out by the waves of the other girl.
The girl whom he swore is not his type.
“I was right”, I said as my hand trembled with anger and then fear
as I waited for the reply, for the apology, a missed call
from those whom I should not forgive.
But the way my heart is breaking
if only they would tell me that they still love me
I could have held them close to my chest
and thought of them as my family,
as the blood that I couldn’t part with.
I would have learnt to pretend
that I was born with a dagger on my back.

I was right, I understood
as I saw few more pictures not meant for my eyes.
(these days there are so many things that are not meant for my eyes),
as I try to digest the unfamiliar rage in his eyes,
as he breaks and breaks and breaks every moment we had
When I ask him “if should I stay around? if he’d change his mind?”
he tells me he doesn’t know his heart
and walks out into the night.

When I switch on the TV I almost expect to find
my name in red, my body in red
laying on the carpet that he loved
but had to ruin for a good cause, for a greater love.
This me, my death must be side effect of his love.
His love is all that matters now.
His love is not our love.
Our love is an obstacle to the happiness he can almost reach.

She calls me up again
to tell me how to gracefully give up.
I hear him behind her, I feel his despair in her voice.
(Must be true love.)
I hear him hum a song in the background,
a song that I have never heard.
I hear the ruffle of his clothes
that he moved from our life to her home
one betrayal at a time.
I hear what I don’t want to hear,
what I always knew-
they don’t want my forgiveness
even if I gave it for free,
I must mend my life by myself.
No past love will do it for me.

“A Silent Machinery” – Nayana Nair

I put on my favorite show
(that I have seen for umpteenth time),
increase the volume,
fill my plate.
My eyes glued to TV
notices too late all that I have spilled,
fill my plate with things I won’t eat.

The same beautiful scene.
Under the yellow light
stand two actors,
pretending to be in love,
doing a better job at it
that we ever could,
saying words
we could never say.

My heart breaks to see this love,
it pops like a bubble wrap,
bursts like a bubble of daydreams.
No, it doesn’t hurt.
I just hear a sound
from the otherwise silent machinery
that keeps me running.

I am glad you meant enough to me
to have become
a familiar bump on the familiar road
that my heart always takes.

“Unsettling” – Nayana Nair

One day I was watching TV
or I thought I was
until it seemed that
the boy whose silence alone was unsettling to many,
the loud girl who dreams of becoming the nightmare she suffers,
even the clueless proud parent who try hard to be cool
were all angry, everyone was shouting
not at each other but at me,
for missing my cue to act,
for leaving it to others to sort my life.
I hate these times
when even entertainment
has to be so painfully self-reflective.
Or maybe it always was.

“Dull Decorations” – Nayana Nair

Today
as I ate,
as I looked around
at the woodwork,
at the dull decorations on the wall,
at the TV show without sound,
as I made way from lifting spoon again and again
swallowing my way through the alieniating conversation,
through the one chunk of time filled with boredom
to the next changing into sadness.
I felt I missed you both.
I am not certain if that’s what it was,
but I recall all the thoughts in my mind,
all their frayed edges,
ending with conclusion
that, “Food tastes better with them.”

“Flowers, skies and me” – Nayana Nair

I place myself in the center of room
as you panic to pack up your stuff,
being careful that nothing is left behind.
There are flowers growing in the corners of the room
that ask you to stay.
There are green skies
that we painted.
There are flaws your and mine
that decorate this wall.
There are TV channels
that we can surf through,
there are days to be wasted.
And I want to waste them with you.

I want you to stay.
I almost blurt it out.
But had it not been for these flowers and skies
and days written in color of your name,
I could have left
to find the dreams I never had.
There is a chandelier
of blood red glass
of your sighs and goodbyes.
I know you are not running away from me
but from our devils,
from our destruction,
that lay between us
every night.