We couldn’t be happier to have author and editor Stacey Donovan as our Personal Narrative Guest...
This work by award-winning author Rowan Perez was written in our Location Writing Workshop, and uses Boston in the fall as the setting for a personal story. Our free online writing workshops, run by the WtW Alumni Network, are open to all young adults and cover a variety of genres, styles, and topics to help writers 19+ develop their craft. Read Rowan’s piece below!
october here always fills inside your nose. the leaves all give a heavy fur coat onto wettened pavement. boston in the fall is stunning, except for the wage gaps and the lack of public transportation and the cost-of-living-crisis. boston has a strange two-heart condition: someone flips me off, says something off-color about college kids ruining the city. the guy next to him says ah, don’t torment the tourists, waves at me apologetically. i drop my wallet in a gutter and it lays there in a halo of trash and shockingly neon ombre leaves.
a college kid picks it up. his glasses are sliding down his nose and he has white adidas socks pulled up around his ankles and thin basketball shorts. i feel like a part of my ribs go sliding backwards in history and know, categorically: every boy, forever, has always worn clothing inappropriate to the environmental conditions around them.
october is burning down my house, starting with the dog.
actually maybe i should clarify i live in boston the way college kids live “in boston,” which is to say i live in allston. i once saw a swarm of rats move like a swirling cape across our parking lot. they heaved in this singular mass of bodies in the twilight, the strange flat back of some corpulent beast struggling to breathe.
my parents live “in boston” the way rich people do, which is to say they live in arlington. which is how my dad ended up in the woods anyway. he goes out to the Fells to walk aurora. packed her in the back of our blue subaru with the who saved who? bumper sticker and organic treats from a specific boutique in belmont.
he says aurora got spooked by tuft’s men’s running team. which is fair to the dog; i’m scared of large packs of running men too. i’ve seen the herd of them passing in their gazelle stride over the loam, their breaths whiting the air. the whole ground shakes underfoot, snakelike and unruly.
it was raining and my dad went out by himself because of the “tense situation” we are all ignoring. i was visiting home when it happened, which was stupid. i visit in particulate; dusting in and out of their lives in order to avoid this kind of thing specifically.
school’s fine. it smells different there and the whole place becomes a tiny city to itself.
i stand in line at the chipotle in davis square and have a stupid moment when they ask me to pay. i hand over my student ID for the meal swipe option only to remember where the hell i am. the cashier doesn’t smile while i buffoon around. i go into a corner against the window and eat stale chips on a bad wooden stool and watch the rain lick down the sides of the chili decal.
outside boston (somerville) is scarf-ready and glistening, a toad city dancing. a dunkin’s bag gets caught in a leaf tornado; her white dress twisting in the wind. i feel romantic and silly so i start the text to my dad about the dog and how it’s not his fault. hey i just -
except it is his fault, so. i take out a journal to draw literally any one thing, but the world keeps shuttering behind my eyes. all my memories turn slate. i draw the dunkin’s bag and then a singular chip and then slap to a new page dramatically and draw a picture of aurora for the lost dog poster. why not. it’s only been two days. she could still be alive, even if schrodinger is more familiar with cats.
when my dad got back from the woods he had been shivering and pale, red-eyed and soaked. taking off his shoes left a puddle. every step he took had a slapping sound to it, like an octopus slathering our floorboards. he’d been outside calling her name for hours; screaming into the orange mist. he said some girl had been out there walking her own dog, looking with him. she’d made him take her umbrella. he was still drenched. took half the ocean with him every step.
he toweled off in a little marionette string dance. my mom said oh you’ve got to be kidding, which was a bad way to start. then she something to him about being more careful. then she said i just can’t believe. then she said this is just like you.
he said something back about how aurora was a stupid name, i was calling it for hours, i would know.
i started packing up my pens and laptop and phone.
she said are you ever going to let it go? god forbid we name her something cute, arnold, instead of something macho. jesus! imagine if we named her bella!
he said - well, you know what i think is cute? i think it’s real fuc-
i went outside.
october in boston was kissing the ground and laying hands on each surface. leaves pushed their tongues against windowpanes. everything here turns a slightly different shade; a glimmered version of itself. shadowed and unreal, painted from a puzzle piece. like the whole thing is a snowglobe, and tippable.
my mom came storming out, her hands red and chapped. she was gripping her hair. sideways, almost like she forgot i have ears, she said: “i just don’t understand how he can be so stupid.”
the dog was gone, and we all knew it.
About the Writer:
Rowan is the author of "Body's A Bad Monster" (Andrews McMeel, 2024). She is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst MFA program for Poets and Writers (2021). She was the 2021 recipient of the Harvey Swados Award for Fiction. She is based out of New England.
