The Garden Gone Poem by ashok jadhav

I walk among streets that remember nothing,
where laughter once grew wild as weeds,
and every corner held a world entire,
a place where fear and sorrow had no home.
Childhood slipped through my fingers quietly,
like sunlight fading behind a locked door.
I reach for it in memory,
but it resists—bright, uncatchable, gone.
The games, the wonder, the careless trust—
all are shadows now, pale and distant.
Even joy tastes tinged with something sharp,
a knowing I was not meant to hold forever.
Time has taken the garden I once tended,
replacing blooms with loss and knowing.
I mourn not only what was lost then,
but the self that believed the world could last,
the self that cannot return,
and will never return again.