“Welcome me as you’ve always done” – Nayana Nair

.

Your frail arms,
the waves and curtains of your skin,
these carved brackets hugging your smile-
give them to me.
Place a shadow of such blessings
on the weary crown of my future.
Tell me the story about
your bent bow, about your magnificent spine
that sings stories about the lost string,
about the vanishing tear-stained targets.
Teach me how to grow.
Teach me how to live.
Welcome me
as you always did
with your overflowing love
and your running out time.
Tell me how to love this world
even as I leave. Teach me how to love
this eventual inevitable fallout of elements
that make up my body and mind.
Hold me tighter in your sleep,
leave me a bit more of you,
so that I won’t be starved,
so that I don’t grow bitter,
till the time we meet in our new skins.
Even there I will carry in me
the grace of the life you have lived.
Welcome me when I come to you again.

“You took my lonely heart to your lonelier world” – Nayana Nair

.

You took my breaking hand and told me stories
of a world where humans can be built again,
where all that darkness
that has seeped into me, into you
can be cast away with a kiss
and mornings with warm breakfast, a hunger of two.
You placed your old sweaters beside mine
and that dark cupboard became a symbol
of an enticing spring that would never end.

Within all that beauty and warmth
how was I to know
that you were meaning to leave,
willing yourself to make that exit,
even when you welcomed me into your arms.
How was I to know that this darkness in you, in me
would continue to only grow in new directions
making us fear not the breaking,
but our breaking to be seen by each other.

I remember you waking up early
and trying to put the clothes of “forever”,
ironing out the new folds in your skin
so you can continue to love this life made of dreams.
I remember you placing my name
on your tongue, in the body of your thirst in a whisper
and then crying silently
knowing you cannot love this anymore.

Yet I kept my eyes closed
thinking of springs, and sweaters,
and a home filled with two of everything.
I kept my eyes closed giving you time
enough to find the strength and the numbness
to embody the person you were long ago.
I feel your weight at the edge of the bed,
I feel your sigh
and your hands still filled with care
thoughtlessly placed on me.
Love is so beautiful, isn’t it,
even in its end.

“green branch” – Nayana Nair

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only the lips of hope,
the planets that break in sunlight,
the dreams that never forget
that they are made with love
but also with vapors that can only dissipate
and lose form eventually, slowly….taking
my form with them
into the void of love.
only this would do. only this i can welcome.
only this i can hold.
only the lips of hope that won’t utter my name,
the hands that won’t let me go,
this violent landscape
with the only green branch in this world.
only those i know to be real.
only that i know to be love.

“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.

“Now what?” – Nayana Nair

For a change I made breakfast for one
and didn’t cry over it.
I didn’t turn back as he packed his favorite parts
of this heavy life with me.
He didn’t ask me about the things I have hidden away.
I felt a bitter thankfulness
that my memories are mine to keep,
that my beautiful moments have been erased from his heart,
that I am not a part of his greed and schemes anymore,
that nothing in me can be ruined by him after this.

I simply stared at the milk that won’t boil
as he dragged away in his small heart
the window frames, the doors to my cold world,
the warm flame of my blue stove,
the table mats on which we spilled our hearts by mistake,
the songs that I will never be able to sing again,
the doorbell, the welcome mat, our plants
that never grew more than a millimeter
in spite of the four years
of sunlight and rain.
Mistakes. We created so much with love,
only to call them mistakes.

I heard the door close behind me,
my so called “heart” moving away without me
and all I could do was hope or pity myself.
All I could do was hate him
so that I can finally give up.

“How people live” – Nayana Nair

I sat there crying.

–

It hurt to know,
how people live,
how they smile,
how they could look at each other,
how they felt welcome wherever they went,
how they could sing along
and not be reminded of all the sadness
that song carried in itself.
How my desolate riverside
was their ‘beautiful view’,
their ‘venue for celebration’.

–

I saw it and cried
for I realized
that this life could never be mine.
I cried because I realized
something must be wrong with me
to not want this life.
I cried because I couldn’t understand
how to set things right.

“What we won’t find” – Nayana Nair

I have spent every bit of my energy
trying not to cry, not to lose,
trying to believe that this suffering is fine,
that I’ll somehow make it through.
I struggle
to forget all the compromises
that have only given me new scars that no one can see but me,
to come in terms with the fact
that it is not my lacking that keeps me away from what I want
but the fact that I am not welcome where I am going,
I am not the one people want to see.

My heart, your love and happiness are both gone.
You cannot recognize them even if they return,
for my eyes have lost their light by seeing too much of this world.
We can be nothing more human version of disposable cups
to the ones who look through us, who live to hate us.
We will bleed till we die waiting for kindness that we won’t find,
for we are not made of stone even if every mirror shows us that we are.

Tomorrow, lets admit that we are not good enough,
lets just pack up bags and walk till we
find an easier dream or an easier death.

“Collecting Meaning and Beauty” – Nayana Nair

I am stacked with all that belongs to you
and nothing that you have feels yours.
It is as if you were busy finding things
that didn’t look like you
and hoped that if you surrounded yourself
with all kinds of right
then your fault that people talk about
could find a mirror to fix its face.
Or maybe
you just wanted to welcome everyone in this mess,
like you welcomed me,
and leave us in this ocean of objects and words
of overwhelming meaning and beauty.
So that after an absence of million years
that ticking clock forgot to register,
when you come back to find us
and ask us how we take our tea,
we could see your meaningless broken smile
as the only hand that can save us from
losing our sense of self,
losing the idea of what we are
that we had barely put together a downfall ago.

“Welcome Back” – Nayana Nair

Once you go to other side,
you are not welcome back.
And even if second chances grant you entry here,
you will eternally be on parole,
under the watchful eyes of others.
In this bright world, I live
as a prisoner
where my sins are my new name.

“Leave my heart behind” – Nayana Nair

I would welcome you into these
arms to cry out your grief,
however small.
If only I could leave my bitter heart behind
that only wants to be consoled
and never wants to care for anyone else.
That only looks at the world
to look for a face
who would take the blame for what it suffered.