“in the light that smiles nonetheless” – Nayana Nair

that’s where my anger lives

on the mud stains of a size 7 shoes
swimming on the white floor of my small apartment.

in the plants uprooted, in the marigolds strewn
and trampled on, in the light that smiles nonetheless.

on the streets where lives my fear – that finds me
and almost kills me, every time i hear footsteps behind me.

on the patronizing attitudes that i dutifully respond with gratefulness.
on the potential dangers, the possibilities of violence that every intimacy invites.
on the things i say yes to with a breaking heart.

in the mirror that only prizes my delicate frame and my weak wrist,
that tells me i would at least beautiful in the missing posters,
in the files housed in grim police stations,
in the videos and photos i would never get to know of (if i am lucky)

in the speeches that tell me i am safe
in the compartments and corners made for me.
soundproof corners where either
i would finally end up believing the facade, the lie of a safe world
or where i would learn how to stay silent to be spared the worst.

that’s where my anger lives

“Black Pond” – Nayana Nair

As I climb,
my steps remembered the shoes I once had
the ones that didn’t hurt so much
and how hands of mine that hacked through them
just to become my own person,
some sort of grown-up.
I climbed over the yellow soft dress
and the light that it caught
just to get this, this body that looks held together
but is not
(this body knows only how to fall apart),
just to get few more shadows that ruin my beautiful wrist
with their persistent passion.
They claw through me, to see how I am made,
how I look and speak once I break.
A stranger once left me at the bottom of a black pond
and called it love just so that I won’t cry
and in return I called him my love
just for few breaths, just for my life.
I climbed over the right to mean the word “love” thereafter
and the dream of knowing a heart other than mine.
I breathe as if I have sinned
yet I walk like I am happiness and determination in flesh.
I cling to all the bitter bits of this world
as if they would ultimately save me.
I climb over, get over, and forget
so easily, so bitterly
that each feeling of mine is just a shade
of resentment.

“All the boxes are checked” – Nayana Nair

It hurts a bit more naturally
and less violently,
now that betrayal has a range,
has not one but many faces.
Now I need not figure what I did wrong.

All the boxes are checked:

family, family, friends, not friends,
thank-god-we-were-never-friends friends,
i-am-sad-i-stood-up-for-you friends,
people who marked my skin with their name
to own me
while i slept in their arms
(another golden cup added to collection of people hard to get,
people who won’t die if thrown away or left alone)
loves whom i am tied to,
the ones who demand smile and sometimes a bit more,
always a bit more.

They know the feel of my hand and love how it heals.
They hold my hand in their sleep
in their nightmares, in the storms of passion
that they need a person to aim at.
They break my wrist
in my nighmares, in my awareness of my fruitless love.
When I am at verge of crying,
they tell me to not give them a hard time
and to act like the refuge that I am supposed to be.

So I tell them “I love you”
and this lie hurts a little less everyday
as my heart becomes the stone pedestal
all my loves stand on.

“Zooming In” – Nayana Nair

When I sit still
I am not waiting.
I am thinking of what is not
and why it should never have been.
I zoom into every empty space
and practice how to look away when it hurts me.
I remove my watch from my wrist
and place it next to plate for a better view
and a ruined palate.
I start from the names I know,
I start from the what they used to be
and what they have become.
All the while not addressing
the forest in the middle of my home
and the animal cries in my chest.
The fog in your mind
now spreads into mine.
Now I sometimes forget your name
as you forgot mine.
I dream of making you cry
to forget my own tears.
I wait and sometimes dream
that you would never arrive,
that I would forget whom I was waiting for
and I would smile not knowing why.

“A Dull Reflection of Hope” – Nayana Nair

In a dull handheld mirror
that had yet to be broken,
I looked at myself
and realized
that someone is dying inside me.

I didn’t know how to accept this,
so I solved every question in my math textbook.
I learned to eat more and sleep late.
Stared at my wrist for hours.
Pretended to sleep fearing questions.
Tried a bit of every sin
and waited around to be damned.

I felt a constant urge to break someone
so this world could be little less happier.
But death claimed my heart
before I could do that.
So now I write “love” on your tongue
without knowing what it means.

“Another fracture in the world” – Nayana Nair

The light over him
has seen his wrist caught in emotion
waiting for words to come and rescue this body
that is defeated by passing time,
that leaves it behind
in the memory it wants,
memory it hates,
the memory
that drains the blue from the night
and fills this breaking cracking world
with the longing he cannot name.

“Beg ” – Nayana Nair

Everything I look at
is sweet impression of your younger self
playing in the garden of my heart.
The shrads from this broken world
stuck in everything
around me.
Why is it that
when I look at a bus stop,
when I look at the sky,
when I look at the chairs,
when I look at my own hand,
they all remind me of you.
They all carry a part of you
even if they have never known your touch.
I have begged these vision
to get down from my eyes,
to come down from my heart.
I have begged them to become a poem.
I have begged them to live forever in you heart.

You look at me
and I see the unfairness of a love like mine.
I have nightmares in which
there are pieces of broken stars
from your sky
lying at my feet.
I see words slashing at my wrist.
I see glares that mock my tears.
I see my battered skin
and the worst uses of makeup.
I see nights where I must stay up and cry.
I feel fear of something sleeping beside me,
I feel whatever I fear was once “you”.
In those nightmares
I have begged this pain-
to leave my mind
when I wake up and look at you again.
I have begged them
to become my poems.
I have begged them to die with me.

“My Night sky” – Nayana Nair

You dip your hand
in my heart,
kiss my poems
as they are.
You hold my pulse
in your wrist.
You hold my shadows
in your mist.
You can swim in the rivers of my night sky
studded with most beautiful words.
But I will be alone in my sadness
and you in yours.
For you cannot bleed with me
but only because of me.

“Out all night”- Nayana Nair

Every night
I saw that girl
who roamed the dark streets
with eyes filled with smoke
and feet swaying with confusion and power.
With clothes that reminded me of night sky.
She was out all night
to paint the world
in the color
of her black beautiful broken heart.
The many masks of her
hung by her wrist.
They smile, sneer and look down
at the faceless shadows
that are bound to disappear.
And though it always puzzled me
how she could smile,
after breaking so many people.
I finally understood
how it could be so hollow
and so fulfilling at same time.
I finally understood all this
the morning when I woke up as her.

“How many more lines” – Nayana Nair

How many more lines should I write
for you to actually see
the happiness that creates ripples
under my skin at your smile.
The sadness that leaves marks
on my wrist,
on my neck,
at the end of everyday.
And the comfort of your presence
in whose warmth
my ever-flowing tears
find fingertips
that can hold and embrace them.
I carry a love in my heart
that can be accepted and
reciprocated by you,
but never understood.