Inventory Of An Ordinary Life Poem by ashok jadhav

Inventory of an Ordinary Life
I measure my life in unfinished lists,
dreams folded back into their envelopes,
days spent perfecting the art of waiting
for something unnamed to arrive.
I walked the roads I was told were right,
counted success in borrowed definitions,
only to find my reflection thinner each year,
like chalk fading from a blackboard.
My efforts echo, then disappear—
stones dropped into wells with no sound.
I ask what difference my breath has made,
and the room answers with dust.
Others seem scripted with purpose;
I improvise, forget my lines,
applaud them from the shadows
while my own hands feel unnecessary.
Even joy visits like a polite stranger,
never unpacking, never staying long.
I smile, I nod, I play my part—
a background figure in my own days.
Yet somewhere beneath this quiet failure,
my heart still performs its small rebellion:
it beats, it waits, it refuses to quit
even when hope feels unreasonable.
If my life is futile,
it is at least honest in its struggle—
and perhaps that persistence alone
is a meaning I have not learned to name yet.