“This ground that we stand upon” – Nayana Nair

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Dear &^%$,

Have you found a way
to leave everything
that you call your ground-
your ground of anger,
of rusting armour of indifference,
of the trauma the heartless giants planted in your heart,
the compass that shows all the wrong directions
and always takes you to the nearest cliff, again and again.
Have you found a way to be better, to live better?
I haven’t yet.

Yesterday I listened to a stranger talk for hours
about how it can be done,
how it will end when we want it to.
It made me wonder if maybe we are not yet ready
for this groundless life.
Maybe that is our only issue.

All that can save us is so temporary, so transient.
Yet the thing that ruins us, is ours to keep-
not like the sun, but like the demon that needs our skin to live.
I wonder if we just need to be needed that badly.
Is that why we choose to cry than to change?
Is that why we choose to hold onto the wave that is drowning us-
just because it is here, because it is ours till it kills us.
Among many other things I also wonder what made us like this.
To be honest I am afraid to know.

What are you afraid of today?
Do let me know.

Yours,
$%^&

“love me all your life” – Nayana Nair

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as his goodbye, he said to me,

“i don’t want to be yours.
but never stop being mine.
never forget me.
you promised to love me all your life.

be my happiness.
let your tears,
let my shadow reign over your heart.
be my happiness.
never chase away the rain that i am leaving in you
never look for another heart.

be my value, be my worth,
be my pride.
you don’t have to be my love
to have a place in my life.
you can be nothing to me
and still be my treasure at the same time.

i don’t want to be yours
but it would heal my wounds, my ego
to know you will be broken without me
your brokenness will make me more complete
than your love could.”

“Only Weight” – Nayana Nair

She said
“The moment I glace
at the empty parking space in the sky,
I wait for you to appear
with the plastic wings and your boyish grin.”

The sky does that to me too.
I look at the drooping branch
the sky holds in its mouth,
I wait for you to tear your most beautiful dress
at the knees, your tiny tiara clutched in your hands,
taking that unsuccessful flight again,
leaving behind all the burdensome part of your being
just to tell me the precious secret of your heart.
Just to fall into me, to take me away,
to fill me with life,
to fall and bruise with me,
to make me yours.
As I fail to catch you again,
as you pretend to die over me
trying to hold in your laughter,
I couldn’t help but smile.
I couldn’t help but want you to be the only weight
that I carry in my heart.

“I miss you too” I said.

“Wrong Answer” – Nayana Nair

My guarantees and my assurances
do not come from my own voice,
do not reflect even a iota of my feelings.
They are not my words
and won’t ever be mine
even if voice them a million times.
But you have to make do with these promises,
the same way I am settling for yours.
I cannot say “love me, i’ll make you happy“.
I am the wrong answer,
I have to lie, I have to cheat
to be chosen.

If I was honest, if I loved you for real,
I would have told you this:

“my words, these empty castle hallways,
the mountains that never answer back,
a mirror lost and flooded with darkness,
the habit of taking up, stealing beautiful names
the thrill of forgetting,
every kind of messed up love,
a sweeter hate to forget reasons
they are all yours,
but you are better without them”

I must hate you a lot,
to hold your hand like this.

“What do you see?” – Nayana Nair

i sat on the cold melting ground,
my hand filled with what would soon be me.
“there is nothing to scavenge here,
there is no hope in such death”,
you said as you placed my hand
on this face that you no longer called yours.
“what do you see?“
(you asked this so often)
“what would you like me to say?“,
were the only words i could say back.
“disappointing isn’t it? we come all this way,
we almost became good enough to live in our dreams
but at the end the only words
we could say with sincerity was sorry“
(it could have been worse, it could have been goodbye)
now that my hands were trapped between yours.
now that you are finally okay with giving up.
my black strands of hair learn to cry,
my shirt learns to turn transparent,
i learn to not love you for your sadness.

“what do you see?“
-a love that would be never returned.

“what do you see?“
-a love that needs nothing in return.

“what do you see?“
-a love who cannot not return back to me.

“Nothing can be greater” – Nayana Nair

The story that sleeps in me
it never talks of you or me.
I wait till it speaks,
till it sees.
I wait till I no longer have to convince myself
that “yours” is all I want to be.
But the story that repeats itself
tells me not to bother
with saying things I do not mean.
There is a sun in the sky
that is smaller than the hunger in my heart
and nothing can be greater than the my need to be seen.
and that all the eyes that fall on my lonesome drooping figure
will wander when I start to bloom, when I start to speak.
The story that sleeps in me
sings about how everyone leaves.

“I remember you waiting” – Nayana Nair

The momentary happiness
of the warm embraces.
These gifts of few seconds
have become our only curse.
For this life never lives upto
the beauty of those seconds.
And now we can only live on
in form of secrets in our books.
These seconds, these pages are where
our story stopped.
I remember you
sitting under trees
waiting for the your tears to melt,
for your vision was frozen in a past.
For you knew too late.
You found who were yours
only when looking back.

“Dissolve” – Nayana Nair

All that was mine,
never was.
And all that’s left
is only yours.
The facts, incidents,
and dialogues dissolve.
Leaving behind
only poems,
that cannot be written
by these hands.

“Promised Destiny”- Nayana Nair

This life. These people. Who can shatter

at least impact.

But I suppose we live in denial.

For I don’t think that we will

be living this life as we are

if we knew how delicate it is.

I imagine you hands and their gentle grip.

You lips, how they curl when they smile,

and how lovely the words they utter.

You skin that shudders and shivers.

I imagine all this and all that is yours

And hence it is mine.

But when you lifeless body

meets its promised destiny.

Will you still be mine?

Those eyes, that skin, those hands

without life.

And you will rot away

till you are part of this earth.

And you will be everywhere,

but still I would be alone.

Is that love?

Is it love that makes my hand tremble

at the mere thought of you not being there.

Let’s choose this love

that will be end of me, end of you.

Let’s accept the pain this love is.

Because nothing we do,

no pain that we give each other

can be worse than what we will be left with

in the end.