Two Poems
Eva Iskhakova
Daddy
“Daddy” was a foreign word
That I never understood.
One that never escaped my lips,
Or fluttered into another’s ear
As my younger self doggy paddled,
Hesitantly, through the murky ocean water.
What my friends felt in piggy back rides
I felt in forced phone calls, until those
Too, ceased in due time.
They saw in family game nights
What I saw in quiet dinner tables
Set for two, not three.
There was a look of pity,
(Or was it judgment?) in every eye
That witnessed my pink colored
Piece of cardstock that read “mom,” but
What was a confused seven year old
To do in arts and crafts on Father’s Day?
With time, they spoke of camping trips
And baseball games, but their backyard
Adventures were my hours spent home alone,
As my mother worked, constantly,
To handwrite a collection of numbers on a piece
Of paper that came in the mail every month.
“Daddy” is still a foreign word
That when spoken about my being,
Seems to always have the word “issues”
Following its delivery, but never stands alone,
Just as my psyche never stands without
The absence of the man that word defines.
Unhealthy Attachments
What have we done to each other?
We are one endless cycle of resentment
Except for when we are a parcel of childlike love
Boundless in spite of winds of change
We are a bundle of commitment issues
Except for when our fingertips graze their other half
In a crowded room of naive bystanders so clueless
To the paragraphs our fleeting touch speaks
We are the worst blend of fire and gasoline
Burning so vivaciously until all in sight are cinders
Except for when our flames align in a passion
Strong enough to erase any doubts from the face of the earth
We are the epitome of a lucid dream
So riveting we force ourselves to stay asleep for one more minute
Of pure bliss amidst the gut-wrenching reigns of reality
Only to realize we cannot remain comatose forever
We are everything our hearts desire until we aren’t
Until those hearts implode with the traumas of their minds
Until our tightrope bears the inevitable question yet again
What have we done to each other
What euphoria have we discovered between our two souls
What prompts us to settle for bittersweet suffering
What has our love brought forth
What lengths must we go to in order to part?
Eva Iskhakova is a sophomore at Rutgers University, graduating in 2025. She is majoring in English and Marketing and is originally from Fort Lee, New Jersey.