My first teacher-the eternal trace in my heart. In every personʼs life, there is a guide who can never be forgotten. My first teacher is an important figure in my life. When I was a little girl, I entered the doorway of school No. 3 in Toʼraqoʼrgʼon district of Namangan region, the person who took my hand was my first teacher-Munavvar Mirzaturgunovna.
At first, studying was not easy. I made many mistakes. I started my studies in Russian. Sometimes I felt weak and even lost hope. But my teacher always helped me. She said: “Терпение и труд всё перетрут”
Thanks to her, I became interested in learning. Now I study at Isʼhoqxon Ibrat creativity school. I got good marks, won school competitions, and took part in different projects. One of my happiest memories was a trip to Zomin from translation. Now I can speak five languages, and of course, this is also connected with the knowledge I received from my first teacher in primary school. My teacherʼs kindness inspires me a lot. I also dream of becoming a teacher in the future. I will never forget my first teacher. She is always in my heart, and I am very thankful to her.
Muxtasarxon Abdurashidova, 11th grader at Is’hoqxon Ibrat Creative School
with William Butler Yeats —Temple Bar, Dublin once famous for friars and printers and clockmakers now in its yellow dressing gown, intoning: a river of vomit, a run of stags, hens, the final whistle, a moon like a sack of flour garrisons the sky, Bill picking up those Derry Girls at The Old Storehouse the bend between breath and silence like the shoulder of an Armalite O they sang American Pie while we drank and watched some troubled fool equine in length take a piss from atop a phone booth on Dame Street I couldn’t get the song out of my head for days Bill kept turning and turning the poem in his like Wilde’s address to Liberty naked I saw thee Shay and your slow thighs and skin like fine bone china the night a revelation or bad news on the doorstep.
I heard the sound of familiar footsteps approaching our street. When I turned, I saw my old schoolmate standing there. I hadn’t seen her since the last days of high school, when she had suddenly married and left. Time had flown by. And now, she was at my door, carrying a tiny baby in her arms.
Her eyes were the same as before, her hair just as I remembered it back in tenth grade. It was as if the very girl I once knew had returned unchanged. Only the infant asleep in her embrace told another story — a story that had already marked her life with burdens far beyond her years.
I walked up to her and greeted her. My gaze fell on the child’s face, and my heart trembled. The baby looked exactly like his father, Qurbon. But the truth struck me like a cold wind — this man had denied his own child, refused even to acknowledge him.
“My husband now carries him in his arms,” she said, her voice filled with pride. “He treats him as if he were his own.” I stayed silent, questions echoing in my mind. It may be so today, but what about tomorrow? Will promises remain unbroken? Will this child’s presence one day be thrown back at him like a reproach?
Meanwhile, the baby slept peacefully, unaware of the weight of life, unaware of the wounds left by adult mistakes. Not even a year old, yet already a living orphan. His mother was still barely a woman herself, and his father had turned his back on the responsibility of being a parent.
As I held the fragile little body in my arms, a storm of thoughts rose within me. Who was truly at fault? The reckless choices made in youth? The blindness of love? Or the indifference of a society that lets such stories repeat again and again? I had no answer. Only one truth stood clear before me: the child was innocent.
My friend kept talking, complaining about another acquaintance, words spilling fast and bitter. I barely listened. My eyes were fixed on the sleeping baby, my mind trapped in a single haunting question: Whose hands will raise him? His uneducated mother’s? The stepfather who now shows him affection? Or the real father, who has rejected him, yet whose blood flows in his veins?
This question pressed upon my heart like a heavy stone — and no answer would come.
Dilobar Maxmarejabova, born in Yakkabog‘, Qashqadaryo, is a young writer and a second-year student at the Journalism and Mass Communications University in Tashkent. Specializing in English Philology, she is passionate about literature, poetry, and storytelling, and often reflects on themes of identity, resilience, and the beauty of her homeland. Beyond her studies, she leads youth initiatives such as the “Rivojlanamiz Club,” where she organizes literary competitions and reading circles to inspire creative expression among young people. Dilobar aspires to pursue further studies abroad and dreams of becoming a voice for her generation through journalism and creative writing.
Old Europeans often buy classic, rather dubious-looking blazers, shirts and shoes at flea markets. But you can’t buy the past, just like you can’t buy flexibility.
***
I don’t have a single HIV-positive friend. European statistics say otherwise. I don’t have a single gay friend. The number of users on dating apps says that this is mathematically unlikely. I don’t have any friends. I don’t even have myself. And I actually don’t have any data.
***
Your family gives you to me like pneumonia. I have never loved either you or myself. If I were Shakespeare and wrote about our life, I would have hanged myself long ago.
My hands were frozen, and I couldn’t move them. Juliette, you and I are certainly far apart. It’s not just geographical distance, but the way a woman and a man think is far more distant. I don’t know what else to say except that I’m still alive. On the night when the light of the spring stars reaches the bottom of the fountain, all I can do is show you my feelings as they are in the light.
I ate rice from a lacerated bowl. There were days when I was beaten so severely with a baton that I could not get up for days. In a world where nothing is certain, one may continue to search for certainty, and I’m waiting for some kind of signal from you. Juliette, even if it’s just a small rustle of wings, it’s better than feeling uncertain.
I don’t have a past like a worn stone. There is no future like a curtain that harbors the wind. Now I am filled with the image of you. I see you on the wine like freshly squeezed fruit that I have just soaked up at a wealthy gallery. Tonight, from the darkening sky, another clear, cold spring rain will fall.
If you want, I can crystallise those raindrops into starlight on my palm. I want to see the light in your eyes, so that it may shine in the center of Juliette’s black eyes and shine in my own. I am beaten to the ground like a stray dog, with no place to go back to, while dreaming of you. My beloved homeland, Juliette.
closed off from humility and the equality of grace.
You could have left without letting me know
you never had my back, that you were always
back there, clawing with judgements,
grievances.
You could have just left without the
tongue-lashing psychological deception,
just turned away without the gutting,
flipping all those years of friendship
on their side, upside down, lying
like liars do with complete certainty,
no remorse or self-doubt,
amputating any devotion
I had left for you,
boiling its remains
on a rack of putrid oil and extremes.
Walk away, dragging this downed horse behind you,
into the thorny bramble of your defiant prejudice
into the fantasy of your less-than-holy paradigm, broken.
II
Broken Glass
Coward,
keeper of a false fixed star,
keeper of many truths,
knower of none.
Coward,
throwing glass into my garden.
Brutal, unnecessary cruelty so you can
own the platform as you leave,
nose stuck high in the air,
hands cleansed of any doubt or wrongdoing.
Coward,
incapable of walking through the mire
hand in hand, of not letting go and trusting love no matter
the centipedes writhing, the small gnawing things
and the larger creatures that scare. Incapable
of owning your own transgressions, or prioritizing
love above your frightened soul.
Coward
cussing a friendship because you quit,
cussing and lying and tossing the broken glass
from your high and mighty mountain.
Coward
with blood on your hands,
who must turn back as you leave,
thinking you’ll say your piece,
but really just recklessly, heartlessly tossing
broken glass.
III
Getting there
I am almost on the other side
(one day, second day)
where forgiveness collides
with terrible truth,
where pain is overcome with pity,
releasing my shield and cry
for human justice.
Quickly through the process
after the breaking of the sun,
after seeing the secrets you stand behind
to prop up your persona, after still,
your deliberate hurt was hurled, and after that,
ending it with pat-on-the-head platitudes,
even still, I forgive you.
I am almost there, I pray to be there, in spite of
your attempts to drown me in false accusations,
in spite of your attempts to undermine my autonomy.
I say, so be it, I am almost on the other side,
sensing a freedom, an inspiration
clearing the thicket of your malice,
almost healed of your viper-tongue lick,
your sticky twisted back-flip truths,
spiritual elitism of the highest order.
I am almost there, and I am feeling good,
relieved, now away from your succubus suckling,
away from your tight-grip surrealism,
distorting clean lines, bright glowing rivers
and intimacy.
I forgive you. I forgive your incapacity,
your hard didactic tongue.
I forgive your small circle land, retreat
from a faith that holds faith no matter the outcome,
that part is easy.
But your foul lying insults
as you turned away, are harder to bear.
I will get there,
I will not carry you with me –
not your soiled diaper dripping, not a single
attempt to condemn me,
or the labels you blew towards me,
blew, night wind cursing, blew
into nothingness.
IV
A Dead Man’s Pockets
Petty, trust snapped
a killed bug on a windshield.
Into the grave, folding, four-fold,
soot in the ears, on your eyelids,
and your poison almost run through.
You lost me long ago, your spell thinned out,
held no power or impact long ago but I thought
love existed between us still, thought
respect existed between us,
that we were more than a bowing down
to your sure-fire claims.
On my side it did.
I cared for you, wanted your dreams
to glow and be more than you ever imagined,
when all you wanted from me was
obedience to your cause.
As long as I just kept my place,
just below your shoulder blades,
we would be fine.
Why can’t you love?
Why the subterfuge madness
parading around as absolutism?
Why couldn’t you acknowledge
my side, apologize for your
terrible accusations, bend a little,
suck in your puffed-up ego a little,
make room for someone other
than you, your way,
your branding rod?
There are more birds in the sky
than there has ever been,
more spark in my fountain than
I have felt for while.
Clarity is shameless,
a stream that rides, collides
with the rusty metal haul,
goes around it until it becomes one
with the waterfall, a cleansing continuum.
V
Touch
The first touch was bitter,
tantamount to an attack, deception
from a vantage point
of spiritual superiority.
The second touch
was touching a tomb, still full
of stench though the flesh had rotted long ago –
just dry bones barely
a full form.
The third touch
angered, like when a snake
snatches a fledgling, angry
at the innate brutality all around.
The fourth touch
was perfect, a release
from the swing-seat of darkness,
a blessed gift that came
at the first touch –
consciously cruel, compliant
to the sway of a lesser self.
VI
Small Moon
A small moon melted
fleshed out a sure-footed sacrifice
but changed directions, too quickly
into the direction of a red star.
Then her heart was burned, crispy
and crumbling, no more a perfect circle,
drooping on one side, gravity became queen
of her false crescendo song.
Hiding her deformity in the dark red burn,
hoping no one could see her misshapened side,
which she tended to only in hidden rooms,
chanting for a cure, bandaging her bloodied side
to try and form again that perfect circle.
A small moon strained to keep her crust,
could not resist flinging curses from her
cavity craters as she went out, could not accept
her time had come, that in the end she never had
a compact core or a solid truth she could rely on.
VII
Ribbon
It is ok to still love you
though our personal love has been
caught by the fishing net,
drowned by the struggle.
It is ok to want you to be ok
and even thriving on a splendid mount,
trailing through the forest.
Though your axe came down
in a forced entanglement of muscle
and sinew, although you have failed me
and hurled enmity into my spine,
in a sharp take-me-down twist
that wanted to leave me maimed,
it is ok.
I am ok and I still love you,
not for what we were but
for who you are, now,
a person trying to
seize for yourself a homeland,
believing you are doing the right thing,
believing your betrayal was a necessary closure.
Closed now and I am ok
and I still love you
over here where we will never meet
in this life or any life again.
Allison Grayhurst has been nominated for “Best of the Net” six times. She has over 1,400 poems published in over 530 international journals, including translations of her work. She has 25 published books of poetry and 6 chapbooks. She is an ethical vegan and lives in Toronto with her family. She also sculpts, working with clay; www.allisongrayhurst.com
