Objects Of Mourning Poem by ashok jadhav

The teacup trembles in my hand,
its thin rim holding more than tea—
the ghost of laughter, the weight of absence,
echoes of mornings I can never reclaim.
A scarf draped over the chair
remembers the warmth of shoulders now gone,
folded into fabric, pressed into fibers,
a quiet witness to the life that once was.
Even the books on the shelf
seem to sigh beneath their spines,
pages heavy with voices
that linger long after the speakers are gone.
Grief collects in the simplest things—
a key, a shoe, a photograph left face down—
turning the ordinary into vessels
of extraordinary sorrow,
silent monuments to what cannot be restored.
I touch them softly, trembling,
feeling their quiet lament seep into me,
and learn that memory itself
can turn the everyday
into a landscape of mourning,
where even the smallest object
is alive with loss.