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Apr 2019 · 648
Your Skin, My Words
Nayana Nair Apr 2019
I took my rusted pen, my useless words
and tried to write something beautiful for you.
Words filled with my love,
words that tasted
like all your favorite forgotten dreams.
But I found myself tracing
the only words on your skin.
I ended up rewriting your sorrow.
I ended becoming the face of your fears.
Apr 2019 · 418
Temperature of this World
Nayana Nair Apr 2019
all the folded boats
spill out of my empty books.

the trees are on fire again.
my mind is on a another wild chase.

my hands light some more branches.
“the world is too cold for me”,
is all that i can say.

today, i am less sad than yesterday,
which makes everything that much more difficult.

today my sorrows have become facts.
my childhood reduced to folded boats in a trash can.

is there any other way to live than this?
Oct 2018 · 248
Drop of Me
Nayana Nair Oct 2018
A drop of me falls on your leaves,
falls from your leaves.
The rain of love
finds you again
even if it is without me.
The ground of reality
hits me again,
asking me to give you up.
It tells me that
if I wait enough,
wait long enough
I will find you.
And by finding you
only I will be ruined.
Oct 2018 · 454
Life With You
Nayana Nair Oct 2018
There is something about this life.
This life with you
that makes me feel guilty.
It is the life that I am not supposed to be in.
I feel like I am trespassing
and any moment
someone would catch me
for asking
and taking more than I deserve
for thinking of a possibility of happiness with you.
Sep 2018 · 540
Stranded
Nayana Nair Sep 2018
The tissues I have cried into
are my excuses,
to hide the clutter of calls and love I forgot to return.
Sometimes it is too late to clear the mess I made.
It is more difficult to retain my will to clean it all up,
which sort of made me guilty
of creating another sad person.
But what is another tissue in another sea.
Everyone dreams of sailing into a brighter morning
leaving behind their darkness in another’s mind.
What if I am as selfish as them.
What is another ship, another selfish wish
amidst thousand such others-
all stranded on a water-less heart
all looking for a flood, instead of directions.
Sep 2018 · 505
Burnt Dreams
Nayana Nair Sep 2018
My night melts into dreams of you
and even when I loose my dream
I loose my sleep,
the night stays with me.
The broken strand of hair on my shoulder
could have been your tear
if it had not passed through this night
I live with,
if it was not born in the fragile dream
that you are.
Sep 2018 · 367
Not Much
Nayana Nair Sep 2018
I am tempted to walk into the night
and look for you
who has always stood
on the other side of my fear,
waiting for me everyday,
carrying a flower of hundred petals
petals that wither one by one
like the clock that marks days not hours,
days that otherwise would have been too long
if something didn’t tell us
again and again
that not much time has passed
and not much time is left.
Though by the waters of sorrow
that reach till my chest,
I can tell that it would be too late
and too futile
even if we meet now,
when all the happiness
that we came with has been spent
by our imprudent youth.
But still even if it is late
I want to come to you,
Even if I am broken
I want to be yours.
Even if for a day.
Sep 2018 · 605
Lost Color
Nayana Nair Sep 2018
The moon shines in my tear lined eyes.
On the edges of my nails that have lost their color.
Tonight once again
light falls on only on those bits of me
that are in no need for the love of a neutral god.
Jul 2018 · 391
Easier Life
Nayana Nair Jul 2018
I wish I was empty-handed
at the end of our story.
But I am left with your memory
and anger at myself for
not being enough.
Life would have been easier
without both.
Jul 2018 · 239
Mess
Nayana Nair Jul 2018
A shadow moves in the clearing ahead
avoiding the columns of lighted air.
It steps on the green
now splattered with red
and looks for a hand that can help,
to get rid of this blood.
It finds my face and looks away
seeing probably I am in a bigger mess.
Jul 2018 · 390
Growing List
Nayana Nair Jul 2018
All these dreams that remains a dream,
their glimmer and shine
now feel like pinpricks in my eyes,
as the list of “not-achieved” and “compromises”
grows long.
Jul 2018 · 621
The Cold Returns
Nayana Nair Jul 2018
The steps I walk
and the fate I follow
all run into faces that somehow
already know all the reason to despise me.
Why is it that walking in these shadows
calms my heart and brings it pain
at the same time.
Is this how life is to be lived?
I myself this all the time.
For if not for my own voice,
there won’t be any answers returning to me
from this world that seems more far away
when I look for answers,
than when I look for places hide.

But I look at the moon today with a new eyes.
I find I am no longer alone,
when you look back everytime you leave.
I find I am no longer alone,
when left to myself, I have someone else to think of.
I no longer need assurances and promises
from this life, if only you walk this earth
with a smile and a lighter heart.
The cold returns to my heart again,
freezing your memories forever in me,
and I smile.
I am no longer alone,
nor are you.
Nayana Nair Jul 2018
There is nothing more confusing
than the love of people who
never really known you.
Who have always been caring
without being affected.

There is nothing more heart-breaking
than to doubt the intention
of people who actually take an effort.

There is nothing more difficult
to trust someone against the proof of experiences
for reason as small as a smile.
To be thankful, without being bitter.
Jul 2018 · 491
Flower, Skies, and Me
Nayana Nair Jul 2018
I place myself in the center of room
as you panic to pack up your stuff,
being careful that nothing is left behind.
There are flowers growing in the corners of the room
that ask you to stay.
There are green skies
that we painted.
There are flaws your and mine
that decorate this wall.
There are TV channels
that we can surf through,
there are days to be wasted.
And I want to waste them with you.

I want you to stay.
I almost blurt it out.
But had it not been for these flowers and skies
and days written in color of your name,
I could have left
to find the dreams I never had.
There is a chandelier
of blood red glass
of your sighs and goodbyes.
I know you are not running away from me
but from our devils,
from our destruction,
that lay between us
every night.
Jun 2018 · 509
Must Run
Nayana Nair Jun 2018
I knew in that moment
that I must run out into the darkness
and find a way
that even the streetlights avoid.
Find a place with no roads
where flowers of new season
will hide my unsure steps.
I knew I had to run away
Or I will never be the same.
So that I don’t loose everything
I (almost) have.
I must run back to that house in wilderness
that I left behind,
to the life I left behind.
So that there are no more graves
of my loved ones
with my name as the murderer engraved.
May 2018 · 477
Be You
Nayana Nair May 2018
Oh! Let me be you.
Who walks with a sun in your pocket
for every rainy day.
Who stood at crossroads
and decided which road shouldn’t exist.
Let me be you for a day.
So that I am not the one
who hides in hollow words,
who makes her bed on the dreams of others.
Let me be you,
so that I can put out my hand
always with the confidence
knowing that the love I ask
shall be given.

But what is this that I feel?
Why my hands shake?
Why my heart cries?

Is it because
the one who is breaking the wall
with bare bleeding hands
has the same pain, same fear
as the one who is hiding behind that wall.
Is it because
this love, this life
leaves no one without scar.
May 2018 · 539
Moment of Contentment
Nayana Nair May 2018
For me, every moment of contentment
is often followed by the realization
of having a lack of either ambition
or the means or ability to achieve it.
And though I can live with the lack of both.
I often wonder
why do we feel the need to be validated
by some measure,
by some reason,
to belong in one of the circles
that the world is divided into.
When we end up questioning our self,
“Who would be actually there for me
if not for the pieces of me
that I am feeding them everyday?”
May 2018 · 307
Everything he was
Nayana Nair May 2018
Everything he was,
everything he did-
was a constant effort
to be true to the image
he had of himself.

He reminds me of struggle
to be someone else
while believing that he is
struggling to be himself.
May 2018 · 539
Stuck in my heart
Nayana Nair May 2018
I sat on the stairs
long after they stopped shouting.
As the shout and anger
made room for themselves
in our lives.
As muted cries
became muted sighs.
I would look at the sky
and see no stars,
but only the tears
that pooled my eyes.
For long, a portion of time
got stuck in my heart
to remind of how lonely a child could be
in spite of having all.
May 2018 · 393
Better Without Us
Nayana Nair May 2018
The dust that lay on the page
that I left open long ago
is now a page on it’s own,
with a story its own.
I look at it and read
negligence and loneliness.
I read how things are forgotten
so easily
and how things are treated as things
by people who
live their life accumulating things
and rest half of it
misplacing, destroying,
replacing and forgetting them.
How people are treated on similar lines
but worse.
How we come back to claim our possessions
when they can clearly exist better
without us.
Apr 2018 · 572
Tell Me
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
I stand here
beneath the secrets piling over me
at the edge, looking at how I spill out of my own body.
Not able to contain myself.
Not able to restain myself
from looking into the darkness,
from looking into the depth of me
where lies the skeletons of many friendships
and one rare love.
Many managed to stay afloat
not wanting to be a part of me,
knowing what I was.
While I just wanted them to stay
for a moment
to tell me what they knew
tell me what I was.
So that I may not feel
like an impostor in my own life.
Apr 2018 · 574
Words of Hope
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
There is a soft tune that
moves beneath your fingers
as they move over the pages
and words and worlds
that you will never see.
All the words of hope
that I whisper
to the you
who exists within these barriers
of skin, bones and sorrow.
I fear these words will be like the music
that doesn’t stop but fades,
dissolving into time and distance.
Like that music
it will pass from me to you,
from you to nothingness.
Apr 2018 · 338
Last Shred
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
When you think you are holding onto
the last shred of yourself,
don’t spend it on the
words that have been long lost in the air,
on the gazes that the eyes have long forgot.
Keep it safe for yourself.
You have lost bigger things than love
and you have still lived well.
And a broken heart is something
that everyone needs in life.
Apr 2018 · 428
Cruel
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
I always had a sense of entitlement
when it came to dreaming of a lover.
That there would be someone
who puts me first.
But I realized with time
sometimes you have to be that someone
who puts others first.
That was such a terrifying and distressing thought.
And suddenly all these heroes
became somewhat out-of-the-world, larger-than-life
someone I can never be.


To realize the pain
it must have taken
to scrap down their lives
for the sake of a person
whose love can’t be trusted or guaranteed.
How one must endure their own foolishness.
How one must look away from our own self.
Knowing all the while
that all this, built
by sacrifices,
can be broken in no time
with one word of hers,
that can end your suffering
and renew your struggle.
That there is no way out.
To cling
or to leave.
And to suffer each minute
no matter what you choose.


It seemed so tiring
It seemed so cruel
to ask someone for that.
Apr 2018 · 435
A sleep so light
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
There is a sleep so light
that it rests upon my brow
ever so careful no to slip into my eyes
and I hear its laughter
on my thoughts that have no meaning
or reason
And when it notices
my tears
it takes pity on me
and holds my eyelids down
with the weight of its love
That’s how morning comes
and finds me,
clinging to the sleep,
clinging to the life,
that will soon leave me.
Apr 2018 · 435
Flower
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
I pluck one leaf at a time
from this flower, this script
my life is.
I throw them from bridges
on cold evenings.
I bury them in the soil
that soils their print with time.
I burn them to ashes,
so they won’t smell the same.
I hang them on trees
that will never bear fruits.
To leave this story of mine
everywhere and nowhere.
So that you may find it.
So that you may not find it.
But
I wear the last page, last leaf
with only one word, you name, written,
on my finger
as substitute for you hands
that I can no longer hold.
Apr 2018 · 434
Not There
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
Stay right beside me.
Stay till I fall asleep.
Once my eyes have given up,
on seeing the world for what it is
and failing each time.
When my hold on your fingers
loosens breath by breath.
When I finally fall asleep.
Let me dream of a love for us
that hurts little less.
Live the life that I dream of.
Even if I am not there.
Apr 2018 · 415
Must Be Lived
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
By the grave of your every love,
I have cried for nights.
For the love they took to their graves
and the life you have lost.
This life that demands me to suffer without hope.
This ocean that I never thought my feet would touch.
The night seem so lonely,
not having someone to
look for me
when I have lost my way
inside the wreck of your life.
Trying to heal the wounds that
you never gave me the right to touch.
The gravestone cries with me.
Like this gravestone,
I mark the life
of the love you lost.

There are certain deaths
that must be lived.
Apr 2018 · 359
Pasture
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
The forests I have burned to land
is now a green pasture,
with flowers too beautiful to have a name.
Though the land has forgotten
the pain, now lost.
The fire still blazes in my heart
every night.
Apr 2018 · 348
Wish
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
The stars that crumbled
at the wind of your wish,
have their light taken say for your sake.
In their dying light they take your name.
Even if the wish comes to life
it is heavy with a sadness, a grief.
For they are just dying breath
with promises to keep.
Apr 2018 · 431
Sidestep
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
The colors that have drained
from the dreams of people,
lie cluttered on the doorway
of their homes.
Everytime they try to leave
for something more practical
and more safe life, that they chose,
that awaits them everyday
and does not keep them worrying
about what all they can loose.
Everytime they step out,
even in hurry,
they sidestep that clutter.
Look at it from the corner of their eyes
and for a second their heart seems aware
of the frost that is killing it.
For a second the reasons for the
sleepless night and blank gazes is recalled.
But the limbs keep moving
to keep a distance from hopes
that never materialize.
On their way back home
they dread to see
the clutter of discarded dreams.
But they want to believe
that ignoring and forgetting it
becomes easier with time.
Although it never has.
Apr 2018 · 651
Residue of Questions
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
Every smile I have ever faked
leaves a residue
of questions on my lips.
Asking,
“Why is it,
that this smile can’t be real?
Why is it,
that the world is so easily convinced by my lie?
Why don’t they try to break
this facade when they see it
in which I am trapped?”
Apr 2018 · 431
Shallow Hearts
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
While the world can preach
of greater pain
and complain of shallow hearts
that never look out of themselves.
They never see the the windows of their heart
that were nailed shut
from outside.
Apr 2018 · 331
Soon
Nayana Nair Apr 2018
There is a thought

that holds my hands

sometimes to save me from drowning,

sometimes to drag me down.

The thought that

all you say

and all I say

will be part of all the noise

that this world has already lost.

This world that had witnessed us together

will soon forget us.

And we won’t feel a thing a that time,

however we may dread that day right now.
Mar 2018 · 361
My Promise to You
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
I will place the promise of tomorrow

on your lips.

They will first taste of cyclones in my breath.

Then they will taste of desperate dying breath.

The will taste of light and of blindness.

They will taste of the dreams that slip from your eyes.

They will taste of the skin that

we are yet to grow.

They taste of things

that we are yet to lose.

I will place the promise of tomorrow

on your lips,

that will soon be your yesterday.

My promise will be memory of

passing trains and fading love.
Mar 2018 · 384
Same Mistakes
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
Do not tell me your secrets.
Do not open your heart.
I have done same mistakes.
The boundaries that you erase
for the sake of love,
can never be made again.
It is a sad thing to bear
for you will always feel the hands
of your love
whispering of death.
They leave everytime
and yet death doesn’t come.
Mar 2018 · 429
My Dear
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
My dear,

Our hands muddied with smaller crimes
and greater guilts,
are the only hands that we have
to hold each other.
Our faults make up this love
is the only love that
can survive the deaths
of our hope and trust in each other.
Mar 2018 · 609
River
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
Rivers of people
crowded the alleys of my mind.
Every thought of mine
had to go through them.
And they were relentless.
By the time it made through them,
it was not the same.
That beautiful new born thought
had turned into a old stranger.
I learned one thing
that I can never have a thought
or an action
that is truly my own.
And even when the building and the skies
of my mind decay,
the people in those alleys will live on.
Mar 2018 · 306
Can we?
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
Can we become better that what we are?
We dream of better future.
But we become worse, become bitter
every time our life runs into our worst dreams.
We hope to forget, we hope to let go.
But become restless, become hollow
looking at the parts we are missing
the parts we took from each other
that we have fed to our ego.
Can we become better that what we are?
Mar 2018 · 540
Spots of Moon
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
I want to slip into the spots of the moon
that you look at so fondly
on the nights that you are about to break.
Mar 2018 · 479
Let me sell you a story
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
Let me sell you a story.
A lie
that my hollow life could live in.
A home that can be changed to my need.
A reality that never exists,
but is as real as
the stories,
the lives
that we avoided by one choice.
Let me sell you a story,
let me sell you my dreams.
I have no need for them anyway.
Mar 2018 · 454
The day we held hands
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
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.
Mar 2018 · 296
All the tones
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
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.
Mar 2018 · 353
Growing Up
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
Growing up
we become closer to the person we are not.
How shallow the facade of maturity is.
How fragile the moments when we feel a human,
how quickly they are lost.
How we grapple at the loose ends of what’s left behind.
How we ask ourselves questions
and write about person in the mirror.
How everything we want
is already in past
and everything in future
is just a compromise.
Mar 2018 · 414
Freckles
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
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.
Mar 2018 · 404
Trace
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
I will trace your tears
through the meteor shower,
through the footsteps that you followed,
through the hands that you held,
through the hearts that you broke,
through the marks on your skin,
through the lost and found columns,
through the moist flower placed in you books,
through that crossed out name, on every page.
I will trace your tears
that will lead back to me.
And say what needs to be said.
An apology.
An apology that you never got.
An apology that you deserved.
Mar 2018 · 788
Flowers, Skies, and Me
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
I place myself in the center of room
as you panic to pack up your stuff,
being careful that nothing is left behind.
There are flowers growing in the corners of the room
that ask you to stay.
There are green skies
that we painted.
There are flaws your and mine
that decorate this wall.
There are TV channels
that we can surf through,
there are days to be wasted.
And I want to waste them with you.



I want you to stay.
I almost blurt it out.
But had it not been for these flowers and skies
and days written in color of your name,
I could have left
to find the dreams I never had.
There is a chandelier
of blood red glass
of your sighs and goodbyes.
I know you are not running away from me
but from our devils,
from our destruction,
that lay between us
every night.
Mar 2018 · 477
Some other time
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
I want to tell you
how you slowly became the tree
that guards me from the happiness and sadness
of the world,
and let me create my own.
How it was lovely to see you grow.
How it hurt to love you.
How beautiful you were even in the worst of your moments.
How I selfishly wanted to be the only scar on your heart
and only smile on your face.
How,on days that I desperately
looked for a reason to stay,
yours was the only name
that anchored me in this world.
I will tell you how I always lived
dreaming of death,
dreaming of release,
and how thankful I am that
you kept me alive.
I will tell you all this.
But not today.
Some other time.
Mar 2018 · 377
Undone
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
The world drips down.
One drop at time.
Dragging and blurring
the colors
that marks the edges
that separate all of us.
A drop too heavy,
a drop too light.
And as it splatters
into smaller drops.


My love and my peace
are droplets fallen far apart.
My happiness and my people,
my dreams and my courage,
exist in different planes,
different moments
confusing me
of what I am,
of what should I choose to be.


And there falls another drop
and someone else
also gets to know,
what it means to be undone
and scattered.
And how beautiful it was
that a droplet of your pain
fell on my droplet of love.
How beautiful,
that a new world was colored
in the drops of the one destroyed.
Mar 2018 · 430
Your Pieces
Nayana Nair Mar 2018
There were pieces of you
that were not mine.
I tried to make you my picture,
tried to get rid of the part
where I could see reflection
of loves that could have almost stayed for life.
I wanted you for me
and that’s where I went wrong.
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