“not a promise of better or worse” – Nayana Nair

.

The slow lights pin him down
as the floor bites into his shoulders,
our eyes do not leave the blood
finding its way back to him.
The music doesn’t stop
though the world meantime
has been broken and made anew.
Something is lost in all this.
We have learnt this many a times.
Nothing can be made into another
or even itself,
without the necessity of loss.
And now that he has been forsaken
by both the land of shadows and of light,
by love that keeps him breathing in misery;
a new hate, new words find his lips
new lines of blame cry from his skin.
And we are lucky to hear him cry,
to hold his painful life, the sharpest knife
against our chest. And in spite of himself
he holds us back learning little by little
how even hurt holds us together,
even days like these take us somewhere else;
somewhere where these lights, and this music,
will mean something different, and not this.

“Only Half of Us” – Nayana Nair

.

At a certain angle, in a certain light
the loops of your lazy writing
seem to be pulling at some dead end,
falling again and again
into the shallow streams,
weaving light into this dying skin-
calling it love.
And maybe meaning exactly the same.
Since your tongue is not yet broken
and your words not yet lost;
your eyes have not been stolen,
by a life that seems too long.
I could tell it easily, only this truth-
you are perfectly made to not be mine.
For though the streets of yesterday
walk out of your steps,
and the spring sings of your heart,
but the water wings and green stones,
the light of gentle days
fall only on half the world.

“Wind Warning” – Nayana Nair

.

13
●◌○

I draw gentle curves
with my crying hands,
carving out my air,
my lungs out of her face,
bringing her eternal
poisoned rivers to my lips.
And yet it is not love.

8
◌○●

As my old sorrows stomp out
new music from my tired body,
a flock of all her forms
perch on the trees of my smoke,
staring and smiling at me.
We wait for something to end.
We wait for love.

24
○●◌

The storms of tomorrow,
flash their warnings
on the broken screen,
that she no longer cares to look at.
I reheat metal for the spine
of our diseased hope as I look at her back
bent over the small counter of life.

“Invasive Blooms” – Nayana Nair

.

The river and the banks
breaking and cracking a smile,
laughing in the sound of that one sly rose –
now a garden, an unwanted carpet silencing all,
a spell of simple long death
holding this part of world,
a species only good at taking.
I feel an allegiance to this blooming pest-
its greed not more complicated than mine.
I look at your back,
your feet glistening in some ancient waters.
You are not here in this wasteland in same way I am.
You lead the way, through the traces of path,
like some god seeing a future good enough to smile at,
beautiful enough to want.
The shadow of empty arks, the end,
now lighted by the same camera,
that could once only take in helplessly
our loss in measures of light.
And with a flash we shall dissolve back
in this landscape, the smudges of white,
the ghosts born of haunting.

“As if it hasn’t been done before” – Nayana Nair

.

A bridge could have solved it-
this emptiness of the sky
that this city was born with.
Some designer hired to carefully
sew graceful metal on the blue.
Maybe an eighth of the population
would have got to run their expensive tires,
and feel the better wind run through them.
(Here it is possible. One eighth.
Ours is a better world, I am sure,
for happy beautiful anchors can never lie.)
I wish I could project this image
into the mind of some bored rich man
violently trying to find meaning
and some cheap immortality
as if it hasn’t been done before.
It would be easier if some hungry intern
added this in some slide or note
just before they collapse and vanish,
and the greatness of having your own bridge
eats away the soiled cushioned brain
of that creature crawling on its hundred legs,
the beauty of which never evades the likes of me.
Its beauty and comfort can never be denied by us-
we who burn and boil and trade sunlight for coins
waiting for our own turn of cheating and grabbing,
growing more legs every night, looking at a barren sky,
every time we look out of ourselves.
A breaking soul’s got to have something like that,
some shape it can be deluded into calling home or future.

“Day 131: I want to be invisible and be seen and cause some sorrow, inject it into the eyes of those who avoid me, only cause they can’t help me” – Nayana Nair

.

The brown toy room
has been decided as the best one
(for today),
all because I didn’t fare well
in the others so far.
Trial and error.

Trial and error seems to be
favorite crutch of everyone
in this building.
Everyone who reaches the end of this road
chants them, reads them off the burns
on each other’s temple. It reminds me
of marking of slaves somewhere, everywhere.
To heal through another burning
sounds cruel, though it shouldn’t,
and maybe that’s the other thing
wrong with us, in addition
to everything read off our sheets.

Trial and error.
I took around these words everywhere for a while-
to my world simulation practice,
to my failed [play + anger] room,
to all my nightmares, all pick me games.
Trial and error.
I fill all the pages
with my wish to haunt all those
who haven’t looked at me directly since
for this may make me a better issue to deal with,
a charm to keep around,
than I seemed yesterday when I told
that sweet kid playing by the door,
how much I hate him in the words
I have memorized off my sore skin,
all because his loud joy
was misplaced, vicious, and cruel,
or maybe because it reminded me
I too was a thunder woven into a rose
and it did me no good.

“I thank them for the halves” – Nayana Nair

.

I stare at
the slow hands
freezing itself in parts –
a touch left in some gap,
a print remaining on some page.
“I am here”, I want to say
though a spell I am not,
a story this isn’t,
so there is nothing
I can change.

The wind warmed by the sun
cannot reach, cannot seek
the land lying low
in your mind,
though in those caves
I have never seen,
I know I am, holding you
in that place
which you cannot leave.

The white of my eyes
dissolves on the coats of messengers
whose mercy and indifference
do not bother me now.
I thank them
for the halves they have saved,
the halves they have weaved,
the string I drag you to our end by.
A dream for you,
and an illusion for me.

“Scratch #1” – Nayana Nair

.

with a stack of to-do list, i wander

not sure if that place still sells

the magazine littered on the sunlit floor

on the surface of the pool, bobbing its head

sailing in the fountain, crowded by people like us

who knew we would find the trees wilting

soft like the dream of velvet, the song

left on the porch of all houses, the news waiting

the sunrise, the call of dead birds, our steps dissolving

on the road, the ice cream melts ruining my dress,

the pockets swallowing up all i could save

the distances calculated in years of light

in the room always lit by our flammable parts

i sing in the voice of choir, pipe organ in my chest,

making me a monster hungry for my own self, hungry as

the low swings in lost parks

“Long ago, before you” – Nayana Nair

.

The red will cover my whole neck
and soon a person with my last letter
would come knocking at your door,
scooping the sound of the bell
as it sings the tune
that the old tower
by the singer’s grave
sang every spring.
I would not have to warn him
of what it does to people,
the slow way the song worms
into your flesh, your eyes,
the world reflected in your skull,
nothing remains yours ever.
He will know by one look at you
that this town belongs
to the singer and his death,
the way you belong to me,
with your crooked teeth, the sugar
from your fifth year in this world
still stuck on your lips,
my smile blooming in your throat
the one that you kill, always, every time.
He knows, as all my loves do,
that you love to kill me in small ways,
in ways words kill trees, and river kills peace.
He will know your blood carries my madness
and he will love you more for it.
I haven’t yet figured out
what curse my letter will bring you,
but I am sure there must be some sorrow
that will connect us
in ways we should have been connected
long ago. Long ago, before you,
I dreamt I loved you dearly,
and never understood why I couldn’t.

“a summer away from/waiting for the fires” – Nayana Nair

.

we were talking of rivers,
and that poem about forgetting,
taking turns to argue
which one of us would break best,
break more beautifully
when the weight of life
removes itself from our equations,
the stabilizing opposing vectors
could disappear now, as we speak,
as we sip the summer through our straws.
but it would be equally sad, you said,
if we were just common spools of sadness,
and not some horrifying or pitiful animals
when unwound. i tell you about that one time
someone fed me gruel, fed me prayers,
fed me notions of how i was meant to suffer,
how true it had seemed.
it is good to talk in past tense, we agreed,
as our empty glasses stared at the sky,
swallowing the sound of thousand crickets.