“Looking at the walls of time” -Nayana Nair

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We are going to remember
and we are going to survive.
We don’t need to peel our lives from the walls of time,
take back words we always truly meant.
We don’t need to forget the faces
that were the most beautiful to us in this world,
they continue to be beautiful even when they don’t look at us.
We don’t need to hate the people who were once our everything
even if now they are not ours now,
not in the way were used to having them.
Though forgetting is tempting and easier on heart,
we are going to remember them well
and when we survive
their goodness shall thus survive in us.

“Something good”- Nayana Nair

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Even when I have almost
found my head,
though I have finally
lost my madness,
the flowers, these red flowers of blood
still haven’t withered.
This heaven, that has only place for me,
hasn’t yet been burnt.
There is the earth that is yet to be found.
There is a sun that needs to forget the feeling
of being drunk on the dark.
There are walls that must be washed and washed
till they can be painted over with warmth.
So wait a bit,
I will let you in.
I will let my heart love,
once I become someone you can love.
Once I become
someone who can see love as something good.

“The places where I am not” – Nayana Nair

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Across this glass,
across the tired melting clouds of mist,
on the other side
there are trees and homes and forests
that are just like places on this side that I rest.

The places where I am not
look as sad as all the places I have been.
Everywhere, on every road there is always a person
who knows a way to break my heart,
and I always end up thanking them for it.

There are rooms where I put up
lights and posters and curtains
and lovers and music,
those are the rooms I want to die in-
with some beauty, with some consolation of meaning .

But always I find the reason for my end outside these walls.
Those reasons live under the brightest light on the darkest road.
And because I was told that the light that I don’t know of
is the one that saves all, even the hopeless ones like me.
So my legs forget how to stop,
my hands forget how to let go,
and my blood glitters for a moment under the light of lost hopes
before it turns black, before it invites in the cold
that I always thought belonged to the inanimate world.

I think of the room I won’t reach,
and the songs and the faces and this world
that I will not be given a piece of, to keep.

As the sky fills me up, pats me down,
and tucks me in the snow
across the white,
I feel someone stir from sleep.
The wail that my throat cannot make,
finds a home in that other world, in the other me
that unlike me
knows how to cry and how to be loved for it.

“If I Keep Walking” – Nayana Nair

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From wherever it may be,
if I keep walking straight
and try not to think of the destination,
eventually I feel the pavement turn to dust.
Slowly, stones dating to the oldest dates
in the recorded history of my life
start appearing one by one.

They sprout new mouths, they learn new words,
they grow into roads, into pillars,
into gateways, and into the walls of the places
where I am no longer welcome.
The fabric of present, my strange choice of words,
my skin that doesn’t belong to this time
all such things make me an alien, make me a pitiful stranger
in a place I know more than myself.

My laughter lives in those places,
with people who can’t find their way to me,
just like I can’t find my way to them.
I hold onto the walls when my tears start killing me,
I tell myself, it will be fine, if I just keep walking.
I tell myself, I will eventually remember my way out of this moment,
as I always have.

But now I can’t. I don’t want to. Maybe I am not meant to.
Maybe the answer lies in never forgetting,
maybe that’s the love I am meant to have.
Maybe waiting is the answer that will suit my weak heart,
since pretending can only get me this far.

I sit on the benches of deserted parks with my bloodless heart,
and I imagine melting here in this imaginary sun.
I feel happiness might have been something like that,
but I can’t remember it, even though it was once mine.

“I am afraid of the ones who still see hope in me” – Nayana Nair

They are beautiful people
with beautiful heart
and they really want to mend me
and that’s scary.

It is scary
because I can’t seem to feel
love or gratitude
for anyone who affirms
that I am as bad as I imagined myself to be.

It is scary
because my disease knows me
and my cure doesn’t.
And the better life sounds like hell
to my broken hearing.

It is scary
because when you hold me from breaking
I can barely stop myself from saying,
“leave me alone,
before i learn how to break you too”.

“Collecting Myself” – Nayana Nair

These four walls that cuts us off from the world
puts me again in that same position that I dread.
My weakness that I once thought I had cast away
is holding onto my fingers again.
If only the world had not abandoned me here with you.
I could have found some comfort in its words-
“you are worth better” or “you are happier alone“,
then I could avoid this hurt that has already risen in me.

~

As usual you look out of the window.
You have always been good at ignoring my presence and my feelings.
I have always envied you for being like this,
for being able to stand your ground, being sure of hatred
and not looking back at what didn’t work out.
But not me.
I believe too much in second chances-
the second chances that I never got.
I am again that person
who is thinking up of words to say
to make you stay,
trying to find a promise that I have not uttered yet
that will make you realize that I cannot be replaced in your heart.

~

But there are days that you have let me down
and days where I have not been enough for you-
the memory of which all my tears have not been able to wash away.
So I collect my belongings and myself
to get out of this painful isolation with you,
this fruitless attempt of our hopeful friends
who wish to see us happy and together again.
I no longer believe love
to be an effort of one person
to latch onto the other who wants to leave
who always has a better plan
and a better person in mind to move toward.
I no longer have the heart to love you anymore.