Title: The Shape Of You Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker stands alone, eyes fixed on an imagined presence. Their voice is controlled at first, almost reverent, then slowly fractures.)
Monologue:
I never wanted to possess you.
That's what I tell myself.
I only wanted to understand you… to be close enough
to see how something so perfect could exist in a world like this.
You were never real to them—not like you were to me.
They saw a person.
I saw meaning.
Every word you spoke felt deliberate, luminous, chosen.
You became the standard by which I measured everything—
my thoughts, my failures, my worth.
I shaped myself around you,
without you ever asking.
Changed my voice. My dreams. My silences.
I told myself it was admiration,
that reverence could never be dangerous.
But look at me now—
I am an echo chasing a source that doesn't hear me.
Do you know what it's like
to love an idea more than a human?
To worship something flawless, unreachable,
and realize too late that perfection leaves no room for you to exist beside it?
I never hated you for not seeing me.
I hated myself for needing you to.
(Pauses, voice lowering, edged with unease.)
Sometimes I wonder…
if you ever existed the way I believed you did.
Or if I built you from longing,
from everything I wanted to be but could not.
If so… then losing you means losing myself.
I am afraid to let go.
Because if you fall from the pedestal I built,
what will remain of me?
I have no shape without yours.
No meaning without your reflection.
(Almost a whisper.)
If you are only an illusion…
then I am the one who vanished first.
(The speaker remains frozen, caught between devotion and dissolution.)