After He Left by Beth Keegan
After He Left
After he left, the first time, after I gazed out the living room window at his retreating figure walking down the hill, his broad construction-worker shoulders and narrow hips, his shaggy blond hair spiking over the collar of his jean jacket from underneath his hat, after he turned the corner at the light by the library, after I ate a bowl of Life and fed the cat, I went back upstairs, looking for something, had already forgotten what, still high, and I stood in the doorway of my room, seeing it for the first time. The baby-blue walls grimy with years of hand-prints, pages torn from magazines, the old framed picture of Jesus and the children on the wall above my bed. My bed, the steam from our bodies still rising in the red winter sun through the window, the impressions of our bodies still writhing on the sheets. My sheet was filthy. Worn shiny gray, dotted with scratchy pills rolling into the trough in the middle of the mattress. A brown smudge of period blood. The pillow case was a field of faded flowers on a dark cloudy day. My mother had put those sheets on the bed before school started last fall, when she was trying to act like a parent for the weekend while her boyfriend was out of town; I'd yelled at her to get out and she hadn't come into my room since. I still had Snoopy at the head of my bed. Snoopy, for god's sake. Did he notice? I guess he didn't mind.
* * *
Beth Keegan is a writer happy to be living in Portland, Oregon. She holds an MA in creative writing from Portland State University.
She has been previously published in Pindeldyboz and The Rocket. She makes millions reading books in her own home, and also tutors in writing at a community college. She is poised to take over the world any minute now.
Articles covering Beth Keegan's performance in Mortified: Portland Monthly Magazine, Portland Tribune Newspaper.