Editor’s Note

It was the smallest of gestures—a dinner invitation. It made a big difference.

I was celebrating the launch of BreakBread Magazine issue 3 while visiting Crystal Salas, our esteemed poetry editor. We had had a great time (ALWAYS go to our launch parties, by the way. They rock.), heard some beautiful work, and as I was getting ready to leave, she and her husband Jacob asked me to join them for dinner, to break bread with them. 

As I said before: the smallest of gestures make a big difference.

See, what nobody tells you when you get into this line of work/love/activism/listening/seeing/writing/publishing/caring is just how exhausting it can be to Make a Difference In The World, let alone Change The World or Try To Save It. And if you are like me—a son of Affrilachian ancestors who preached the Gospel of Hard Work as Heavenly Salvation—then you lean into this world saving mindset DEEP. So fighting (in all its many forms) the “Good Fight” (in all its many forms) is what you always do, even as the world turns as stubborn as diamond in its refusal to change. As I write this, for example, an Unspeakable Act has challenged the stability of an otherwise peaceful Europe; has forever altered the Black community in Buffalo, New York; has forever cast deathshadow over Uvalde, Texas.  By the time you read these words, sad to say, the cold, dead hand of yet another Unspeakable Act will have no doubt touched us on an international, national, state, local, and personal level. Still, we at BreakBread are here, in our little corner, scratching the Flint of Hope against The Rock of Ages, eternally optimistic that the sparks given off will ignite a light so bright, it will burn away the darkness. As they say in Superman comics, it is a never-ending battle. 

Sometimes, you just need a break.

Which is why three central panels in Faith Mayhew’s piece “Suiting Down” struck such a chord with me. 

As with everything in this issue, “Suiting Down” is brilliant. It suggests that stepping away from the fight is, in a way, still fighting. But the three panel sequence—where our hero covers her super-symbol in a reverse “Clark-Kent-Rips-Open-His-Shirt-To-Reveal-Superman” shout out—spoke the loudest. The respite of self-care is necessary. To walk away is not running away; to protect your heart is not to harden it. In fact, Mayhew warns us all that self-care is vital because, while the battle is never-ending, we are not. 

That idea echoes throughout the work presented here, such as Faith Earl’s “Our Front Yard, Fifteen Years Ago,” where, while enduring the hardship and hard work of staving off death, simple gestures affirms life—“Even on these days, you would sit it in all that tall grass with me/ lifting rocks, naming the weeds, looking for salamanders.”—, or Mathew Lily Vogel’s compelling “Emergence,” which captures that instant between world-weariness and reclamation of strength. Piece after piece directs us to not forget ourselves (and others) in times of peril. Isn’t that, after all, what fighting the Good Fight is all about?

We offer this issue as respite, weary warrior. Sit with this issue, and break bread with some friends while you take a breather and take it all in. Your soul will thank you. 

W. David Hall, Editor-in-Chief
May 29, 2022