“The Sun and the Sorrow” – Nayana Nair

.

The sun and the sorrow
were in my eyes.
I couldn’t see your face
as you bent down
and carefully separated
your words of love
from the pieces of me.

When I am in sorrow
I try to imagine
what you could have looked like
as you carefully took back
everything of yours.
I imagine an ugly indifference,
sometimes I imagine a tear.
I don’t know what to do
with this “not knowing.”

But in these painful retellings
I feel relieved at this uncertainty
that sometimes lets me remember you
as the part of me that I couldn’t help but love
even in my breaking.
But I also feel relieved at the ease with which
I can draw that cruel expression on your face
which won’t let me stay in love with you
any longer than this.

“What I Remember (28)” – Nayana Nair

As I grew up, whom I hate changed constantly, it changed more frequently than my dream for future roles.

Maybe that’s why I was so particular about what I hate and I did it with fervor for the first few years.

But as time went on that hatred turned into just another silence – my refusal to speak with anyone who I wanted to hate.

And now it has transformed to hating people while I pretend to get along with them. Curling inside with anger at the same jokes that I feel compelled to laugh on.

It is not an easy thing to do but it is still easier than all the alternatives. (The alternatives are my nightmare.)

Because even though my hatred has grown over time, I also find it in me that space to accept people at their ugliest, not loving them, just accepting that they too can live here, be here and do what I hate, and telling myself that I have to be fine with that.

I have come to hate this side of me the most – this cowardice dressed as generosity and understanding, where I do nothing but smile as my blood, my ideals burn and collapse.

Maybe that’s why I have hated myself most, with constant determination, without doubt. This hatred is my only light – my anger at myself, for not doing enough, for taking up fearing my uncertain volatile feelings and views, my own voice, more than I fear this world.

“feelings suspended in the void of my heart” – Nayana Nair

Everything you do,
everything I say
is suspended in the layers
of admiration and disbelief.
What I feel lies somewhere between
“the love that is” and “the love that cannot be”.
This place,
where my uncertain feelings live,
here you will find my many graves
and here I will die again.
Not because your love can’t save me,
but because I doubt every heart
that holds me too dear,
I want to run away from this love
that is ready to die with me.

“Assumption” – Nayana Nair

We assumed that this fire that melts and hurts
was safe in our hearts
and no one would have to know,
no one has to get burned, bear marks of
this uncertain change that leaves us strangers
to the ones we love.
That makes it difficult to act
like what we used to be,
when we are forgetting memories
we are supposed to enact.

“Can’t do this alone” – Nayana Nair

Hold me back
from loosing myself to the the slow pain
that reaches from within me
spiraling up to any light it can see.
Pushing me, climbing over me.
Not caring.
Needing not to care,
while my body moves
from one breaking world to other,
from one uncertain gaze to another.

As I read my own words aloud,
as I see myself trying to disown them,
to strip away my own image
that I must maintain
for others to be at peace.
I feel the need for the closed boxes of solitude
where I made my own seasons and delusions
where I rehearsed answers to questions no one ever asked.
I don’t want to go back to that place,
the only place my heart thinks of as home.
I can’t do this alone.
This life of yearning and restraining
myself from living my own life.