Title: The Quiet Treaty Poem by ashok jadhav

(A single figure stands beneath a dim light. The air is still, heavy with unspoken memories. The voice begins low, steady—then rises and falls like a long-breathed confession.)
I used to believe peace was a victory—
a flag planted on the rubble of defeat,
a smile forced upon a wound
until it learned to stop bleeding.
I was wrong.
Peace is not something you conquer.
Peace is something you make—
slowly, painfully, honestly—
with the very things that once tried to break you.
I fought everything.
I fought time, as if clocks could be intimidated.
I fought fate, as if destiny might apologize.
I fought people, memories, mistakes,
and most of all, I fought myself—
that restless judge who never adjourned,
who replayed every failure like a sentence
that could not be appealed.
I raged against what did not happen.
I mourned the life that almost was.
I held grudges like heirlooms,
polishing them with anger,
telling myself they were proof
that I had been wronged,
that I had cared.
But anger is a loud companion.
It promises strength
yet leaves you exhausted,
standing alone in the echo of your own shouting.
There came a night—
not dramatic, not announced by thunder—
just a quiet evening
when even my anger seemed tired.
The questions stopped demanding answers.
The past stopped knocking.
And in that stillness,
I realized something unbearable and true:
Nothing was coming to fix this.
No apology large enough.
No explanation clean enough.
No miracle sharp enough
to cut the past away.
And so I stood there,
face to face with reality—
not as an enemy this time,
but as an unmovable truth—
and I understood what it meant
to make peace with something.
It was not surrender.
It was not forgetting.
It was not saying, "This was right."
It was saying, "This is."
I made peace with the choices I made
when I did not yet know better.
I made peace with the people
who could not love me the way I needed.
I made peace with doors that closed
without explanation,
and roads that led nowhere
despite my faith in them.
I stopped demanding that the past
confess its crimes.
I stopped waiting for life
to return what it had taken.
I let the weight drop from my hands,
not because it was light,
but because carrying it
had taught me nothing new.
Making peace did not erase the scars—
it taught me how to stop reopening them.
It did not turn pain into joy—
it turned pain into a teacher
who no longer needed to shout.
Now, when I remember,
I do not flinch.
When I look back,
I do not beg.
I nod—
as one acknowledges an old rival
after the war has ended.
This is my quiet treaty with life:
I will not fight what cannot be changed.
I will not poison the present
to punish the past.
I will carry my story without chains,
my regrets without rage,
my losses without bitterness.
Because to make peace with something
is not to lose—
it is to finally lay down the sword
and discover that your hands
were meant for living,
not for war.
(The figure exhales slowly. The light fades—not into darkness, but into calm.)