“How to guard the doors and fail miserably” – Nayana Nair

.

It is not the night that brings in the monsters.
They are just creatures, just nature-
that exist outside the door that you are guarding.

They come in because this world is theirs as well.
They come in because they can,
just like how you can go out.
This is the fair deal you don’t want to exist.

At least they do not look for you,
they do not mark your picture
and throw darts at it.
I love them for that,
for the lack of vicious premeditation,
the lack of fun in their delivery of hurt.

The river of pills that flows into my window
has nothing to do with them.
The hurt that keeps you awake,
the nails that slowly make marks
on the surface of your eyes

this ruined place, this brokenness
are always the gifts of the ones
who look like us.
This has nothing to do with the monsters.
This has nothing to do with nights.

But has knowing such things ever helped.
The days are just as frightful as nights.
Now anything that looks like me,
and everything that doesn’t –
they are possible ends of me.

Now I must either run away from everything
or must end up loving them all, forgiving them all –
this broken temple of knowledge, this fake shallow sacred unions,
these glorious wretched feelings that won’t let me remain me.
How far should I run. How foolishly should I love.
How do I decide.

“Always, Only” – Nayana Nair

You told me of love and what it does to your heart
and how your heart wants to see me and love me alone.
But it is too hard. A harder task than you imagined it to be.

You loved me for my silence, for my grace of letting you go,
and for the tears in my eyes
always, only for you.

You stand outside my heart, filling my insides with
your shadows, with your hopes.
Becoming my only light.
Asking me to step out of myself,
asking me if I am up
for another search of your heart-
that you have left behind
in someone else’s heart tonight.

You kiss my hand and tell me
you like this better-
me being your hope, your home
rather than being your wretched love-
the love that that leads you to your worst face.

I close my eyes
and again
I try to forget
what I wanted you to be,
what I hoped you would be for me.
I try to forget the wretched love you have become.

“she must have been as lovely as you once were” – Nayana Nair

i happened to find a picture of yours
a blue ocean engulfing two shadows

it must have killed you
to have come back alone

to sit and imagine what she could lived like
if you were the one lost and buried in the sea

even though you are wretched and she is gone
but it is because you held her hand too tight

that you still feel her hand
slipping from yours every night

“Argument” – Nayana Nair

The essays I have written
on the wretchedness of this world,
they are merely an argument,
a poor argument,
the only argument I can give
when I am confronted
by the wretchedness of my own soul,
the blood on my own hands,
the weight of shame on my conscience,
and my inability to change.

(Quote from manga Oyasumi Punpun)