Title: The Question That Never Leaves Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands alone in stillness, as if the world has paused around them. Their voice is calm at first, reflective, then grows heavier with urgency.)
Monologue:
I wake every morning with the same question—
not loud, not urgent, just… waiting.
Why am I here?
Not how I got here, not what I must do,
but why this breath, this moment, this fragile existence
was given to me at all.
They tell me life has meaning.
That purpose is inherited, assigned, earned.
But I have searched for it in work, in love, in belief,
and all I find are answers that dissolve the moment I touch them.
If meaning exists, why does it feel so temporary?
Why does it vanish the moment I stop moving?
I fear the silence.
Because in silence, there is no distraction—
only the awareness that time is passing,
that I am aging, changing, moving toward an ending I did not choose.
I am a thought trapped in flesh,
conscious of my own disappearance.
(Pauses, voice lowering.)
And yet… there is wonder in this terror.
Because if nothing is guaranteed,
then every moment matters.
Every choice becomes a declaration:
I was here. I felt. I mattered, if only to myself.
Perhaps the meaning of life
is not to find an answer,
but to live honestly inside the question.
To stand awake in a universe that offers no instructions
and still choose to care.
(Softly.)
If this is all there is…
then let it be enough
that I existed, that I questioned,
that I did not sleep through my own life.
(The speaker remains still, suspended between uncertainty and quiet resolve.)