Why I Woke Up Having Bit through My Tongue in an Ambulance in Basque Country by Devon Hoxer8/1/2026  Photo by YANGHONG YU on Unsplash Because my body was discovered in the road, rain-wet and broken. Because going to the doctor day ten of our trip to remove a bug from my ear was a thrill, but clearly not enough. Because I thought it might be a spider and was too chickenshit to drown it out. Because Northern Spain had become our place. Because you had your pintxos and I Euskara—the chef and the linguist—to each their muse. Because its alphabet is an island. Because every island is a woman is a storm. Because you wanted to select clams at the Gernika market. Because I wanted to devour a gilda every day, and because they were incomplete without beer. Because the grains of sand collected in our shoes, on the table, between the sheets. Because you tacked mesh to the window to mend the entrance. Because the ants were getting in, and deeper. Because chaos had become our place, restless and teeming. Because beer was incomplete without Fernet. Because at the time, one drink at a time wasn’t enough. Because it was our last night. Because my most fluent language was self-destruction. Because the last thing I recalled was singing with the Belgian couple, cigarettes, and spinning. Because the cobblestones had carried me too far and alone. Because I thought I was dreaming, thought I could fly, and jumped.
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 Photo by Daria Nepriakhina on Unsplash shift⌘? (help) “Where’s the Bluetooth on my laptop?” “Can you edit a PDF?” “Why won’t the picture attach to email?” My elderly mother’s phone calls, typically conducted during the middle of my workday, frequently begin with low-grade tech support. Not exactly running the “Genius Bar” myself, these interactions usually necessitate that I Google her question and parrot the information back to her. ⌘H (hide) Sometimes I don’t answer. Busy, cranky, or a combination of the two. If picking up the phone will cause an argument, it’s better for our relationship that voicemail runs interception. We both have sharp edges. ⌘N (open new) My new year commenced with a missed call. Clearly a pocket dial while driving, the opening half of her inadvertent voicemail is muffled gray road noise. The clicking of the turn indicator. The squeaking of window wipers. A cough. Then, believing herself alone, she begins to softly sing “Auld Lang Syne.” Mid warble on the lyric about drinking “a cup o’ kindness,” someone seemingly cuts her off. Laying on the horn, she spills that cup o’ kindness, splashing obscenities across the dashboard. Huffy muttering. Pause. She resumes singing, taking it from the top. ⌘G (find again) I’ve listened to that message repeatedly. Gentle off-key positivity disrupted by a piercing reactive outburst followed by the swift recovery back to song – a perfect encapsulation of her essence through the technological blundering of accidental audio. ⌘S (save) One day, in the not-so-distant future, I’ll miss being her tech support.
 Image via Lukas Stoermer Dawn starts at ground level, offering the same soft promise, but new. The near trees pull their limbs out of the dark. The ones in the distance hold the few lights of town like fallen stars. Now the brake lights of the school bus flicker down the dirt road through the trees. No mist today. No rain. No lies yet. Now darker gray streaks the charcoal sky. To sit and watch shouldn’t be hard. Is that a glimmer of frost on the dried milkweed in the field? A crow taking advantage of the whole sky? A hunter firing shots at any available prey? An hour passes as more light arrives. Now sunlight grazes the crown of the tallest oak, its leaves muddy brown, but still bright against the brightening sky.
 Image via Frantisek Duris Tonight like some kind of calligraphy scrawled across the night sky, out over the lake, like an electrocortical of light, which is to say a sign, an omen the old ones would say, and tonight the man is leaving after sixteen years of living in this institution. He stands, staring out at the rain, touches the small scar on the side of his head from the gunshot that crossed him in a shootout down in the city of bridges, when he was a young man and nearly lost to his mama, and his grandmama who comes to visit, and he goes home to see, and eat the batches of biscuits like the ones he brings back to us. He says, “Biscuits need to be smothered. Butter and honey. Butter and honey.” He wears his Pittsburgh Pirates cap slanted to one side to show off his scar like a medal. The man would get mad when he first came here as a young man, and grab a chair, raise it as if to hit you. He could barely speak. Then the words began to come out as a stutter. Then sentences. Now the man speaks halting but can be understood, and he has learned to wait. He’d stamp and hit before he could speak. Now he walks slow with patience, sometimes too much. Late for meds, or dinner, he moves an easy river. His anger found a box in his brain he rarely now lets the lid off. Still his memory is bad and full of holes, like the bullet holes that filled his body that night he nearly died, and his family sent him here, not just for rehab but to hide. He suffers from night terrors and insomnia. Sometimes he wakes and doesn’t know where he is. I guide him slowly back to bed. In the morning, he is full of grins and high fives. He has learned to shower and dress himself. He can’t tie his shoes. He will never have a job, but he can set the table. He can get his own cereal. He can say his prayers. He attends church with a volunteer. He sings out loud and offkey. He is good with days and time which is no small thing. He can tell you the statistics of every Pittsburgh pirate. He knows when he is talked down to. “I’m not a child,” he says. “I’m not a child.” But now nearly two decades have passed since the bullet pierced his head, and he is a man, one who likes to stay up late and watch wrestling, who wants two sandwiches each day for lunch, a man who can play checkers and win. He falls to sleep singing—offkey with his headphones on. I gently tap his shoulder, say, “R maybe go to bed? You fell asleep in your chair.” He looks at me. His eyes brown and deep. One eye wanders a bit, as if someone is sneaking up on him. “OK man,” he says. He says it all the time, “OK Man. You’re OK man.” His mother now is out of prison. She is clean and working at a hair salon, drives up to visit these last years. His cousins say they can help. And he will help his mother stay clean. He will help her clean the house and do the dishes. She will tuck him in and he will say, “Mama, I am a man.” We stand under the awning and watch the rain. He says, “The sky is angry.” I say, “Amen.” “Angry ain’t get you nothing. Angry ain’t get you nothing.” We watch the lightning crisscross and jag. The thunder rumbles as if a last goodbye.
 Image via Jason Mavrommatis A Haibun Sunset. A quiet, perfumed name for the end of something that should scream. When the last one came, it did not simply close the sky, it took something with it. We stood there, watching, and someone whispered, “Why now?” Why wait until the fire is reduced to ash before lifting the weight? Why not strike when the sun was full of heat, rage, and witness? The sun said nothing. The day did not answer. We only knew that something—or someone—had died with it, and the day, in its usual manner. And the day like every seasoned traitor, wore indifference like a well-fitted robe. It could have cried. It could have released rain. It could have bled its clouds red, or, at the very least, dragged another soul along for balance. But to wish for death—even when it feels fair—is to play god with soiled hands. They say it is uncultured, barbaric, to pray for a man’s fall. That’s what the scriptures and the textbooks of the well-fed teach. But God, if what we feel is called evil, record it. Engrave it deep in the book that weighs sin and sorrow. Record the mother who cried for help and received nothing but speeches—long, meandering speeches. Record my brother who mocked a neighbour’s stench, and the next week saw his teeth spilled like beans across the tar. Record my father’s death under the rain, in silence. And the way they said no one fired a gun. Remind me, how do we call a bullet hole a coincidence? So, if something must die with tomorrow, let it not be me. Let it not be my brothers, not my sister whose laughter still carries light. Let it be what we carry in our chests: the unnamed thing which eats our dreams raw. You know, God. We know. And we know you know. the sky did not cry but something beneath it broke-- no thunder, just teeth.
 Image via Karl Fredrickson We built our temples out of what was left of the body. Skin turned to plaster, ribs into arches, the hollow of the mouth a place to echo prayer. Blood dries faster when it believes in something and ours hardened to stone, iron made bright as gospel on the wall. The saints were human once, but no one remembers that part. Their faces burn through varnish, their bones humming in their glass cases. Pilgrims kneel before whatever still glows; candles, skulls, and small miracles sealed in airless gold. The chapel roof caved in, but the candles kept burning, caught fire. Ash fell like snow into the aisles, soft and radiant. Icons melted but the eyes remained. Someone swears they saw them move, a slow closing and reopening, as if the painted heaven behind them were breathing. We washed our wounds in holy water until the pain began to sing. Each scar became a psalm we could not ever stop reciting. Skin learns to glow where prayer touches it, light gathering in bruises, in the soft hollows of knees and throat. Grace tastes thin and metallic on the tongue, iron, the flavor of the body remembering how to believe. We named the silence between miracles eternity. The small breath held after the light finally went out. We kept the incense burning long after the gods left. The smoke bends itself into the shape of wings and, for a moment, everyone in the ruin believes again. Miracles rot slower than flesh. Light seeps from the bones for years after death, a slow confession of the body’s refusal to go dark. Everything in the dust remembers the shape of devotion. Holiness crystallizing around absence, turning emptiness to matter, turning prayers into mineral bloom. This is how the divine left fingerprints on everything it touched, and some of those prints still pulse under the right light. Every offering eventually becoming bone. Ashes cling to what refuses to be forgiven. The mouth of the dead tastes like gold leaf: soft, bitter, eternal. Even rot has rhythm, and faith is only the body learning how to decompose. We are what remains when belief turns to residue, when relic becomes the only river running toward survival. Our tongues bloom with dust. Our veins hum with light. Somewhere, a god is still listening to its own quiet, fading echo. The bones glow faintly through the glass. We kneel because we are holy, and because we are afraid of what still answers.
 Image by Claire Kelly on Unsplash I saw your eyes again, just a glimpse, yet I always catch you in flashes. Sometimes your eyes are blue like your father’s, but that day I saw my own, a fog-draped forest with just a touch of green. A glimmer of what could have been, what is gone, what I can only know in my imagination. When your brother was born, I saw you in his umber eyes. When I caressed his fragile fingers, know that I was caressing yours. When your sister was born, I saw you looking out at me through the hazel line etched around her caramel irises. When I nuzzled her thick, fuzzy auburn hair and kissed her wrinkled forehead, I breathed in your essence with hers. Once at the park, they chased one another, fumbling as toddlers do. I saw you there, dark brown hair tousled around your honeyed face. You just turned twelve. The fall leaves swirled under your feet as you zig-zagged beside them—guiding them away from uneven ground, cushioning their falls. I closed my eyes, grasping at the already fading image, your laughter humming through my memory. When your brother started school and cried every day, you comforted him. You found a picture with all of us in it, and made a necklace from it, one he could wear to school. When the sadness set in, he’d look down to see we were there with him. Do you remember when he filled the school bathroom sink with water and paper towels causing it to overflow? Of course you do. His punishment meant using the nurse’s bathroom, and you were there beside him on those walks of shame. You were twenty-nine when he rode his first motorcycle, but you were on the back, holding his waist, and when he built his first engine, you guided his hands. When he graduated, you clapped the loudest, whistling and cheering even though we were supposed to be silent until the end. Your sister was a little tougher. She didn’t cry when she started school, but you were still there when the teasing began, when the little boys told her she couldn’t t-t-talk. You gave her strength to endure, to walk away. You told her that stuttering was a sign of genius. Because people who bumped, as you called it, had so many creative ideas in their heads at one time that their mouths just simply couldn’t keep up. You were seventeen when she was drawing stick people and thirty when she was composing portraits, but you sat beside her all the way, her muse. And when she attached herself to that boy, old man, old woman, groomer, whoever it was on the other side of the chat, you helped her see that it was a mistake, that she could get hurt, that she deserved better. As she struggled to crawl out of the solitary pit she’d dug, you reached for her hand, hoisting her over the edge back to life. Sometimes, though, I lose sight of you. If the days stretch on without a glimpse, reproach eats at my belly, and I hope you can’t see my shame. I’m afraid of losing you completely. I have no pictures or videos, only my imaginations, but even those images fade, like photos shuffled too many times. I tell myself that it’s a good thing because it’s hard to see you but not have you, not touch you, not hear you. Perhaps I shouldn’t fear because when I do see you, it will be like waking up from a happy dream, and when I don’t see you—when I don’t see you, when I don’t see you—you will become my shadow, like a happy dream I can’t remember. Jenn Martinez-Stefaniak lives in Massachusetts where she spends as much time as possible outside with her family, taking in large doses of the energy and artistry that is God’s Creation. She writes for children and adults, seeking to encourage and inspire her readers by exploring the intersection of faith, nature, and daily life. Her work has appeared in Prime Magazine, Louisiana English Journal, and Nature Friend Magazine. When she’s not writing, she’s hiking with her beloved dogs or visiting faraway places, real and imagined. She can be found on Instagram: @jennmartinezstefaniak
 Image by Arda Tutkun K I am eight and Daddy tells me it’s time to clean my room. “You have ten minutes,” he says. “For every two minutes you go over, I’m going to cut the head off of one of your stuffed animals.” There is no way he’s serious, I think, but I still hurry to pack away my Littlest Pet Shops. Daddy has taken away my toys before, but never destroyed them. He’s threatened to, but never does. Daddy wouldn’t. And I want to do a good job cleaning. I stack my duct tape wallets in neat piles and begin stacking my paper doll clothes when Daddy walks in, eyes mean and mouth tight. He glances at the scattered paper clothing around me and then trains his eyes on my stuffed animal shelf. My heart skips. “I’m almost done!” I plead. “Everything else is done! I’m trying to put them away nicely!” The closer his hand gets to Moolan, my favorite Webkinz, the louder I yell. “I wasn’t distracted this time!” There’s snot beginning to drip from my nose. “I just had a big mess!” Daddy doesn’t hear me. While I beg, he pulls Moolan down from her shelf and holds her neck between the scissor blades. Daddy looks down at me, then at his watch. “You’ve got one minute.” I can’t tell the paper shirts from the paper pants through my tears. ~ Daddy I know how this works: she cries, I back down, she never learns her lesson. How else will she learn that the world won’t wait for her? That everything you love can disappear? Who else will teach her that nothing is truly hers? Who else will teach her discipline, hierarchy, compassion? How else will she know to parent her kids? She will thank me later, when she can clean her room in under ten minutes. Hopefully she’ll always picture me in the doorway, scissors in hand, reaching for something she loves, the same way I can see my dad perpetually unbuckling his belt in the corner of my eye. This is how I destroy her laziness. This is how I conquer her softness. “You’ve got thirty seconds.” My hands tighten on the scissors. ~ Moolan I wish I could stop her crying. I wish she’d grab my hoof and twirl my stray threads between her fingers like she always does. I wish she’d make me kiss that Clydesdale Webkinz named Peach again. Her fingers are busy trying not to rip the thin cardboard. They resemble real doll clothes now, floppy and wet and fragile because she won’t stop crying over them. It’s a department store’s worth sprawled out in front of her. I’m trying to stay hopeful. I wish I could stop her crying. It’s so loud, her sobbing, her pleading. I wish I could turn my beady eyes away. If I had a spine, I could look our aggressor in the eye. I could beg him to stop her crying. I could beg him not to hurt me. I could beg him not to hurt her. Please don’t hurt her. “You’ve got ten seconds,” vibrates behind me. 10 The guillotine grows closer, I can 9 feel the scissor blades tighten 8 on my neck. Please don’t. 7 She’s looking at me now, wet cardboard 6 held loose in her hands. She knows she’ll never 5 finish in time. She knows it’s all over. 4 So do I. Our eyes shimmer. We’ll meet again 3 on www.webkinz.com. I’m trying 2 to look on the bright side but 1 we both know it’s not the same. 0
 Image by Michal Balog on Unsplash The burner won’t light. She presses the knob, waits for the faint click-click-click, but nothing catches. Just the stale scent of gas. She clicks it off, clicks it back. Nothing. The pot is already filled. Tap water. Slightly cloudy. Half a box of store-brand pasta waits beside it like a promise she can’t quite keep. In the other room, her son arranges plastic soldiers into battle lines. They’re hand-me-downs from a neighbor, chipped and faded. She can hear him narrating the fight in whispers. She clicks the burner again. Nothing. The past week plays on a loop behind her eyes. The pale pink notice folded into the mailbox. The manager’s voice, all polite dread, saying “just one more week.” The food bank closed for inventory. The freezer humming its empty hum. The bruises on her paycheck—hours cut again. She presses the knob harder, as if force will conjure flame. She tries the back burner. A hiss. A faint spark. Then nothing. Her stomach growls and it embarrasses her. She hasn’t eaten since yesterday’s coffee. She keeps thinking about her mother’s kitchen, the one with the yellow walls and the burnt linoleum. Her mother would stand over the stove in her robe, boiling water for rice, chain-smoking, humming along to the radio. When they had food, they cooked. When they didn’t, they made noise so the hunger had company. She never wanted this for him. She opens the window. Gas worries her more than hunger. The night air slips in, heavy and wet with Alabama heat. A mosquito hums by her ear. The window screen has a tear in it. She meant to fix it last summer. From the living room: “Mom? Is dinner ready?” “Almost,” she says, too fast. She crouches beside the cabinet and rifles through it. A dusty jar of peanut butter. A box of crackers, mostly crumbs. A can of peaches with no label and a dent in its side. She turns the can in her hand like it might give her a better answer if she holds it long enough. In the drawer, she finds matches. Her hands shake as she strikes one. The flame jumps, bright and sudden. She leans in and turns the knob again. A whoosh. The burner lights. She exhales. She sets the pot on the flame and watches the water begin to shift. A few lazy bubbles rise to the surface, then vanish. Not a boil yet. Just motion. She leans against the counter, her arms wrapped around herself, as if holding her ribs will keep everything else in place. The flame flickers blue and steady beneath the pot. It’s something. It’s enough. The boy appears in the doorway holding a green soldier with a missing leg. “Can I have some crackers?” “Pasta’s almost ready.” “I’m really hungry.” “I know, baby.” She crouches to meet his eyes. “Can you wait ten minutes?” He thinks about it. Then nods. She watches him walk back to his battlefield, one sock falling down. His shoulder blades sharp under his shirt. He doesn’t know about the envelope on the table. The one that says “Final Notice.” He doesn’t know she skipped lunch so he could have seconds. He only knows the flame is on now. That the water will boil. That dinner is coming. She stirs the pot with the same wooden spoon her mother once used. The handle is worn smooth from years of circling broth, scraping sauce, coaxing something from nothing. She stirs like it matters. Like it always did. The water boils, loud and rolling. She tips in the pasta.
Imager by Clark Tai on Unsplash
I.
I practice late at night with the door locked in a darkened house. I make sure the tub is filling while my parents are doing their own wind down routine—cold cream and Dove bar soap and Letterman booming from the old TV on their old dresser, the cacophonous roar of audience laughter slipping over the sound of running water
I sit and wait on the edge of the porcelain tub, my knees bumped together like two heads pressed in thought, and I count how many hairs are springing up on my legs, thinking about whether running around half naked with pimpled, pockmarked, hairy skin would be the best thing for my psyche
Once in the tub, I sit on my knees and see the same legs are now distorted in the sloshing miniature waves like I’ve been a wound cut open and my flesh is the blood dispersing in water—no lines or boundaries to hold me in, only the melting molecules of an idea.
I dip my face in and count my breaths and every few Mississippis, I pull it out to the side just long enough for one sharp inhale before going back under. I time it and I time it and I time it until wet hair falls in my eyes and fills my nostrils and clamors its way inside the corners of my mouth like a tentacled haunting from the drain, and I convince myself that I am ready.
II.
At the swim team tryouts, I never make it off the bleachers. I watch the other girls dive in and pulse and propel their way through the lanes. Their arms cut and glide through the teal water like fins, mouths open like gawking trout to suck in oxygen before they submerge again. That’s where I went wrong, I think. I used my nose. This nose that stalls and spurts in the blooming seasons and wakes me in fits of sneezes. How could I rely on it for essential support while in the water?
The girls time themselves perfectly, one after the other, like a dotted line of mythic water beasts, slick flesh with pearled droplets rolling off bony shoulders and long legs, not a hair or peach fuzz in sight. When the coach calls my name, I pretend it is not me and when she turns around, clipboard in hand, I pull the towel closer around my shoulders and get up to slink away unnoticed.
III.
I never tell my parents I tried out for the swim team and when they find out my best friend makes the cut, they hug her and say things like well done, Katie and that’s impressive. My mom turns to me, spatula in hand, asking why I never tried out and wondering out loud if this is the start of our conjoined, braided, co-dependent friendship splintering—if we would at long last be finding our own hobbies.
I feel a crack inside my chest when Katie laughs but doesn’t respond with something like no way and the crack grows into a gorge when my dad adds it will be healthy for you girls, you know?
That night, I once more have my ear pressed to the door like a conch shell to catch the waves of a live audience roar drifting through. I tiptoe into the bathroom and lock the door behind me. I sit on the edge of the tub, knees clinked together like buoys in lazy waters, and I wait for the tub to shapeshift into a great lake or ocean. I climb in carefully and sit on my knees, laying parallel over the surface like a diving board waiting to spring. I catch a breath and hold it tight, a bubble of compressed wishes I push deeper towards my belly and plant like a seed. And when my face melts into the water, I count the Mississippis again before lifting my head up off to the side, this time opening my mouth, exhaling, inhaling again, and going right back under.
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