Title: Echoes Of The Wrong Poem by ashok jadhav

(The speaker sits alone, hunched forward, hands clasped tightly. Their voice is heavy, sometimes breaking, as if the words themselves hurt.)
Monologue:
I can't undo it.
I can't. No matter how many times I plead with the past,
it stays. It lingers.
That one choice… that single, stupid, reckless choice
that changed everything.
I see their faces—every day, every night.
I hear the echoes of my own words, the lies I told, the promises I broke.
And I—what am I, now?
A shadow? A mistake wrapped in skin and bone?
I don't recognize the person I've become.
I keep thinking, "If only…"
If only I had spoken. If only I had stopped.
If only I had… anything but what I did.
But I didn't. And the cost… the cost is everything.
Everything I love, everything I wanted… gone.
And I am left… with me.
With this unbearable weight, pressing me into the floor, into the walls, into the very air I breathe.
They say people can forgive. Time can heal.
But how do you forgive the one who destroyed it all?
How do you mend a life you shattered with your own hands?
I carry it everywhere—every glance, every laugh, every moment of joy—
and it poisons them all.
I wish I could go back. I wish I could steal the moment,
erase the words, the act, the choice.
But I can't.
So I live with this… guilt, this remorse,
and it is more than I can bear.
More than I can even speak aloud.
(Pauses, whispering to no one in particular, voice trembling.)
I am sorry. I am sorry. I am… sorry.
(Sinks to the floor, head in hands, as if trying to press the guilt out of existence.)