Acceptance

abstract-313628_1280A volcano of ants is under my skin. Squadron of bowling balls barrels through the ally of my mental processes.

Ask me to slow down. Ask me and I may break apart – a thousand pieces of me will fly in every direction. I am waiting.

I am not waiting well.

Pieces of me have already flown far. Wide. My essays rot in an editor’s inbox. A faceless critic holds the shrapnel I dug from my soul and then dropped onto the page.

Drops of sticky red. My pain. And if the answer is no, must I go back in?

 


 

Kristen MacKenzie lives on Vashon Island in a quiet cabin where the shelves are filled with herbs for medicine-making, the floor is open for dancing, and the table faces the ocean, waiting for a writer to pick up the pen. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Rawboned Journal, GALA Magazine, Extract(s) Daily Dose of Lit, and is included monthly in Diversity Rules Magazine. Pieces are forthcoming in Blank Fiction, Crack the Spine Magazine, Maudlin House, and MadHat Annual. Her short story, Cold Comfort, placed in Honorable Mention in The Women’s National Book Association’s annual writing contest and will be published in a special edition of the association’s journal, Bookwoman, in June.


 

Kristen MacKenzie
Kristen MacKenzie lives on Vashon Island in a quiet cabin where the shelves are filled with herbs for medicine-making, the floor is open for dancing, and the table faces the ocean, waiting for a writer to pick up the pen. Her work has appeared in Brevity, Rawboned, GALA, Extract(s) Daily Dose of Lit, Maudlin House, Blank Fiction, Cease, Cows; Crack the Spine, Eckleburg, Referential, Bluestockings, NAILED, Knee-Jerk, Minerva Rising, Mondegreen, Prick of the Spindle, Crab Fat, Wilderness House, Poydras Review and Diversity Rules. Her short story, Cold Comfort, placed in Honorable Mention in The Women's National Book Association's annual writing contest.