Title: Still Here With Me Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands alone, holding an object of remembrance—a photograph, a letter, or simply empty air. Their voice is quiet at first, weighted with grief.)
Monologue:
I still reach for you.
Without thinking. Without meaning to.
In the quiet moments—when the world finally stops demanding things from me—
my hands remember where you used to be.
They tell me you're gone.
That distance, or death, or time itself has taken you away.
But how can that be true,
when you live so loudly inside me?
Your voice answers my thoughts.
Your laughter echoes in rooms you've never stood in.
I speak to you when no one is listening.
I imagine what you would say,
how you would look at me,
whether you would still recognize the person I've become.
And that… that thought terrifies me most of all.
The world keeps moving, cruelly indifferent.
People fall in love, lose interest, forget.
But I remain suspended—
waiting for a return that will never come,
grieving a presence I cannot touch.
Is this love, or is it a wound that refuses to close?
(Pauses, voice trembling.)
I wish I could tell you everything.
The things I never said.
The gratitude. The apologies. The love I assumed you already knew.
Now they sit heavy in my chest,
words with no destination.
And still… I carry you.
In the way I breathe. In the way I endure.
In the way I keep going, even when the ache threatens to undo me.
You are gone—but you are not lost.
Not to me.
Never to me.
(The speaker closes their eyes, holding the memory close, as if bracing against both pain and comfort at once.)