“Loose Words” – Nayana Nair

The words once written with passion

once written with anger,

sometimes filled with sweet drops of sadness

and sometimes with happiness that

made cracks in our masks.

All those words have broken down

have become loose and weak.

Those words are not our love.

Those words are our lives.

Our love is the ruled lines on paper

on which rested our broken lives,

on which rested our tested faith.

 

“Friends?!” – Nayana Nair

Let me give you company on your afternoons
and let me think of things I would rather listen to, while you talk.
Let me open my mouth to keep you close with a secret
and I will watch as you cut my string of words
and remind me of who you are.
Let me forge a new myself that you can approve of,
one less thing for you to complain about.
It’s no trouble for me.
I have lived like this throughout my life.
I do not see you.
You do not see me.
And we need not been seen, to be what we are.

“Great Escape” – Nayana

Even on this side of the mirror,
in the world of shining surfaces
and sharp and dissolving images,
I have found myself
looking for clues of this fabricated world;
of trying to look for a secret trapdoor
and hidden rooms,
for a way out of here.
Not thinking even once what it meant
to be out of this world.
And even if I make it out
that world that my heart can hold
from afar,
can it witstand the touch
of a person made of light and glass?
No great escape.
No new world, no new word,
can make me more real
than the image I am.

“Other ‘Almost’s” – Nayana Nair

Sometimes you find me the words
that I am too tired to look for.
And place it in my hand
with such careful touch,
that I feel I could almost cry.
And that too will be added
to the list of other ‘almost’s
that my life has lived through.
These moments become a house
standing at the shore of my simple wants.
I find myself thinking,
“This could be my home.
I can bear life here.
I can even get used to it.”
I am glad that I have such a place
to think about,
to look back.
Even if my feets don’t agree
to what my heart wants.

“Held Down” – Nayana Nair

Though I want to write of you
I find myself incapable of that.
Cause I have not yet learned the words
for the kind of person you are.
And all I have written about you,
the only thing that
can live in those lines,
is my heart that doesn’t yet know
how to love you.
The ‘you’ who cannot be held down
by any love.

“Forever” – Nayana Nair

There are ruins of hearts hiding
in the secluded places
that refuse to vanish into
this decaying world.
Stagnancy is not an accurate word
to describe
the beauty of these corners,
where the caresses of sunlight
and wind are trapped forever.
There are places
that hold the touch of the ones
the world has lost.
Though I am yet
to fully realize
the depth and sorrow of
this word.
But here it doesn’t matter.
Here the summer and the winter are same.
Here the cry trapped in my veins
can sings along with voices from far way time.
Here my silence
can be music.
Here I can sit and hope
for our love to last forevers.
And know that there are certain love
that can never cease to exist,
but only forgotten.

“Sway” – Nayana Nair

The only word I kept under my tongue
my name – and yet it is dissolving
into the fog where all things are lost.
As the weight of my name slips
from my mouth,
I feel how latching onto anything is
a suffering.
I feel how letting everything go is
also a suffering.
And I keep swaying in the currents of
wanting everything
and wanting nothing.
I am living
but I do not know what to do with this world
or with myself.
I have no answers.
Words do not have much meaning
on the lips of someone
who has been abandoned by every word.

“The day we held hands” – Nayana Nair

The silence wrapping our words
was not born out of a deed or two.
Or out of lack of love.
We didn’t wake up one day
and began feeling alone.
The day we held hands,
we felt the alienation
that only love can bring.
No great love can
change what we were.
Where the plains of our own
lives and its insecurities met
there we see a crack,
to remind us everyday
that we never fit with each other.

“All the tones”- Nayana Nair

If I memorized
all the tones that drifted in from
a world of happiness
we are no longer inhabitants of,
the tones that drip ever so slowly
filling our heart with love
and filling our life with pain,
the tone that ripples through
every word I weigh on my tongue.
all the tones
that resonates in me as the wind passes
through the places in my heart
where your laughter once lived,
all the tones
that separate bird cry and bird song.
I think I would find the song we lost,
the song we sought
that we could never hear
in the noise of our shouts.
And though our love is dead
I would like this song
to have a home to rest.
As for our love,
what is lost is probably
lost for best.

“Freckles” – Nayana Nair

There was once a boy
who looked at my freckles
and told me that they were
autumn leaves in winter skies.
That I am a sunset to cherish
and a storm to pet.
Who looked at my words
and told me, that
he could find all the things
he has lost in his life
in my words.
He told me
the day he loses me
he will lose much more than that.