Title: The Price Of A Choice Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands alone, hands trembling, voice wavering between anger and sorrow. They pace slowly, as if measuring every word against the weight of its meaning.)
Monologue:
Revenge… they say it brings justice.
They say it heals, it balances the scales.
But it doesn't.
It burns.
It burns the soul of the one who carries it,
leaving nothing but ashes where once there was peace.
I wanted… I wanted to make them pay.
To see the same fear, the same pain, mirrored in their eyes.
I imagined the satisfaction, the triumph…
but I was wrong.
Every thought of vengeance tightens the chains around me,
dragging me deeper into darkness I cannot escape.
And forgiveness…
forgiveness feels even worse.
To forgive is to open a wound wider,
to admit that they hurt you and you let it go.
It feels like weakness.
It feels like betrayal… of myself.
So what am I to do?
Do I let the fire of anger consume me,
turn me into someone I no longer recognize?
Or do I release it,
let it fall away… and risk being hollow, empty, exposed?
(Pauses, voice softening, almost pleading with themselves.)
Is there a middle ground? A path that does not kill me slowly
from hatred, or leave me bleeding from mercy?
I do not know. I do not know.
All I know is this: every choice has a price,
and I am standing here,
weighing the cost…
of what I allow to live in me.
(The speaker lowers their head, hands clenching as if holding the invisible weight of both vengeance and forgiveness, trapped in the moral noose of their own making.)