Forgive Me Martha

by Jay McKenzie

Forgive me Martha, for I have not trimmed. It has been six months since my last haircut and I have used the GHDs with abandon. I home dyed and forgot to Vaseline my hairline. I went on holiday and let sunscreen grease and the bitter tang of chlorine strip my hair of moisture. I squeezed raw lemon juice on my head and baked under a relentless sun, I singed the ends with a drunken cigarette. I let a postman from Ross-on-Wye tangle his fat sausage-fingers in it, didn’t cry too hard when he pulled some out. Oh Martha, forgive me for the way I took to the split ends, pinching the forked tails with bitten fingernails and split them apart like conjoined twin surgery. Back when I stopped getting out of bed, I didn’t brush or wash it for a month. When I eventually bathed, thick spider legs of hair lay inert across the greying surface of the water and I wondered how red my blood would look mixing with the soap scum. Since my boyfriend left, I have yanked no fewer than seven fat greasy locks from random spots on my head to send him in the post and all I got in return was a community police officer warning. O my God, I am heartily sorry for having wrecked my halo, and I detest all my transgressions because I dread the loss of the thing I hide behind to give the appearance of beauty and the pains of potentially having to show the world my bare and unhidable face. I have offended you, my stylist, my listener, whose work is art, whose ears are always open. I firmly resolve, with the help of thy healing hands, to do penance, and to amend my ways. Amend.

About the Author

Jay McKenzie’s work appears in Maudlin House, The Hooghly Review, Fahmidan Journal, Fictive Dream and others. She has been recognised in prizes such as Exeter Story Prize, The Henshaw Prize, Quiet Man Dave, Edinburgh Story Award, Oxford Flash Fiction Prize, Exeter Novel Prize, The Alpine Fellowship, Bath Short Story Award, Aesthetica Creative Writing Award, The Bridport Prize, Fish Short Story Prize, The Wenlock Olympian Prize and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. Her novel, Mim and Wiggy’s Grand Adventure (Serenade, 2023), will be followed by How to Lose the Lottery (Harper Fiction, 2026).