All Jules Wants is a Peloton
by Rachel Furey
Stage 1: Exit Gynecologist’s Office
Jules is usually a screamer, but this is beyond screaming. The worst of birthday presents. Like a fucking pinata breaking open inside of her. Her breath catches and her hands go to opposite shoulders like she’s preparing for the ultimate trust dive. Her feet are in those stupid stirrups, though there’s no horse anywhere, and she’s wearing her blue elephant socks—the fuzzy ones she naively thought might save her. The gynecologist took one look at them and said “cute” in a nasally, condescending voice so obvious even Jules could decipher it.
That must be the speculum inside of her. It’s cold and pushing hard. A low, guttural noise—something that in no way encompasses the pain of the moment—escapes Jules.
Dr. Orner pauses briefly. “You okay?”
At least that’s what Jules thinks she hears. Everything’s muffled. And the stupid masks don’t help.
Maybe Dr. Orner mistakes the silence as permission to continue. Or maybe she interprets Jules’ head movement as a nod. The other woman, mandated to be there by law, says nothing.
Dr. Orner’s been narrating the process like it’s a bland mystery novel, but once whatever-that-thing-is climbed inside of Jules, she mostly stopped hearing words. For several years now, her uterus has been something that’s been glaringly annoying for about a week a month and utterly useless the other weeks. Now, she’s more starkly aware of it than ever. Perhaps it’s tearing apart. Perhaps she’ll finally be rid of the organ.
The room swims around her. The ceiling tiles are hazy. She tries to detach from the lower half of her body. Become just a brain absorbing the room.
Not a single plant in the room—a travesty. Mom said no one really needs a horticultural therapist—Jules’ chosen profession because who wouldn’t want comfort via plants when words just won’t cut it? Plants could do a lot of important talking in this room. There should be a snake plant on the side table: something solid patients could reach out and grasp. A mum hanging from the ceiling to offer some color. An aloe plant by the door, something to soothe on the way in and out. Even an invasive like Japanese knotweed, those swift-growing stems, would comfort. Jules knows the knotweed well; their touch is gentler than that of humans.
“All done.” Dr. Orner’s standing over Jules, talking in slow syllables, which maybe means she’s already said this at least once. Who can really hear through the mask anyway, without the help of lips to make out consonants? Health facilities haven’t kicked masks yet. They say it’s out of concern for Covid, but Jules wonders about all the grimaces and grins they hide, the smart-aleck expressions.
She sits up, the paper screaming under her like a dozen dying origami swans. It’s only when she’s upright that she realizes her face is wet. Her mask can’t absorb it all.
“Do you want me to call your mom?” Dr. Orner asks in a voice Jules is sure she doesn’t use with other patients. Mom is probably partially to blame for that, calling to make the appointment, calling to offer the particulars of Jules’ situation, using diagnostic language that Jules abhors—she’s neurodivergent, goddamn it; no need to complicate it with medical jargon—all because her mom’s the ultimate helicopter parent who insisted on following the medical advice of first pap smear at age 21 even though Jules is asexual and nothing—not even a tampon!—has climbed into her vagina before today.
“No,” Jules says. She’s not a fan of eye contact—looks at the door—while she says, “I’d rather have a hysterectomy than have to do that every three years.”
Dr. Orner touches her shoulder, the same way she did earlier this afternoon when she assured Jules she might become interested in sex someday. As if asexuality wasn’t valid, as if never having sex, or being vagina-less, would be something that dimmed her life forever.
“I’m serious,” Jules says. She’s staring at the floor now, where there should be a succulent garden. “Should my vagina feel like there’s a lightning bolt strobing inside of it?”
“Everything looked fine. We’ll have the results of the pap smear in a couple weeks.”
“But the lightning bolt?”
“You’re probably feeling that way because of how anxious you are.”
This is screaming moment #4 (at least) for today, but Jules holds it in. It bounces around in her stomach, itches at her esophagus. To let it go would only prolong her time in this room.
“Should I call your mom?”
“I already said no.”
“Okay, then. I’ll leave you to get dressed. You’ll feel better soon.”
“You should get some plants,” Jules stutters as the door closes.
She’s managed to sit up, but it’s hard to get her body to move beyond that. Sometimes her limbs go heavy like this. Like her body’s spent everything. There’s not a single window in the room or she’d use that to recharge.
She closes her eyes and remembers what she stumbled across flipping through channels three mornings ago: the first women’s Tour de France in years. The peloton glided across the screen like a murmuration of birds. She wasn’t usually a crier. But she was wet-faced then, too. She’d spent her life trying to exist in groups, trying to discover the harmony needed to coexist like that. And here was the peloton. Speeding down the road in rhythm. Knees and elbows all somehow avoiding hitting each other. Somehow not crashing.
Jules has watched every morning since. She pedals her legs now, warming them up, reminding them of her bike in the rack out front. A peloton would be fucking perfect right now. But what awaits her instead are the sounds of the city, smells of gasoline and trash, various restaurant aromas intermingling, maybe mowed grass. She peels off the gown. She sweated through the back. The AC bites at her. She tugs on her T-shirt and cargo shorts, gives her elephant socks another tug so they reach her knees. She doesn’t like the way little pieces of gravel nip at her shins when she rides.
Stage 2: Gynecologist’s Office to Ashley’s Ice Cream
Outside, she ducks into her helmet and pops in her ear buds: plant music made by converting voltages from plants into notes. Prayer plant’s playing now. If Mom were here, she’d make a stink about how Jules shouldn’t ride with her music in; she needs to hear the city. As if she can’t hear it through the music, can’t feel it through her feet, through her limbs. The city breathes heavily. It’s impossible not to hear it.
She reaches into her shorts pocket, pulls out her sunglasses. She hops onto her bike, then quickly off again. The lightning bolt’s still inside of her. For a brief millisecond, she wants to fall into Mom’s arms. Wants to call her and ask if they can go for ice cream together. But she’s twenty-one. She can go for ice cream by herself. Maybe that’ll help numb the lightning bolt. Ashley’s Ice Cream is less than a mile away. She’ll walk. Slowly. The lightning bolt still flashing.
The thing about biking is, when she’s going fast enough, the world around her blurs. She can only see right in front of her. It’s like being in a tunnel. And she can imagine those tunnel walls as anything she wants—rewrite the world. Craft it into a space where the lights aren’t as bright and the sounds aren’t as loud and people talk to each other like they really care. In a world like that, Ashley’s Ice Cream would have rocking chairs and weighted blankets and plant music. And a shit ton of plants. Jules doesn’t understand why no one’s opened an ice cream arboretum or botanical garden. Who wouldn’t want to eat a sweet treat while surrounded by the awesomeness of plants?
She doesn’t like the lightning strobe-y feeling while walking, so she hops onto her bike. Stays there a second. Oh, to be an earthworm or insect or any vagina-less animal. Half a mile, she whispers to herself. Ashley’s isn’t that far. The smell of car exhaust and burning blacktop sear her throat. There’s no bike lane on Temple, which is a royal shame. Squeaky bus brakes pierce through the plant sounds. SUVs throw heat onto her arms. Pockets of heat rise blurry from the blacktop, swim in Jules’ tunnel like jellyfish. She keeps hitting stop lights, not able to go fast enough to make her tunnel walls blur into something remarkable.
“Great socks, girl!” someone shouts through an open window.
Jules doesn’t even try to determine if it’s sarcastic. Sinks deeper into her plant music. Arrives at Ashley’s relatively unscathed. Removes helmet. She likes the way the contents of her cargo shorts jangle, work to keep her grounded—standing. She pulls her helmet to her stomach and pushes through the door into the cool air and jangle of music. The place smells like sugar and steel.
The worst part of getting ice cream is the ordering. She has to wait, then push clear words through to someone on the other side of the counter. If they’re out of her flavor, she’ll have to come up with another flavor on the spot. That’s why she always chooses a #1, #2, and #3. She repeats them in her head, whispering to herself in line. She leaves her earbuds in so no one will try to talk with her; that’ll just interrupt the process. She sways from foot to foot. Chocolate. Chocolate banana. Chocolate cherry. Sometimes she wants chocolate in her chocolate. Today is not one of those days.
The woman on the other side of the counter smiles. It looks genuine.
Jules pulls out her earbuds. “Chocolate. Small. In a cone.”
They have chocolate. They almost never run out of chocolate. Or cones. So Jules doesn’t have to worry about what piece of land the Styrofoam cup and plastic spoon will be buried in. When the woman hands her the cone, Jules grasps it so eagerly she almost breaks the cone. She turns to analyze her seating options: a few sticky indoor tables with the music playing or outside in the heat with cars roaring by.
She chooses a small table in the back. The chairs are the kind with the sharp metal back, the legs never even. At least that lets her rock a little. She takes her first lick and imagines she’s kelp swaying in the Pacific Ocean. A sea otter brushes her leg, his fur soft, slick. Mom’s never taken her to California—they’re too poor for that—but she swears something inside of her would click just right if she could stand by the Pacific and see the kelp forests. All these quirks rumble and whir inside of her, but maybe it’s not so much tied to genetics, all those facts Mom’s trying to absorb via the stack of textbooks by the kitchen table. Maybe it’s more of a yearning for the right kind of habitat, the way a salamander needs just the right amount of moisture, the way bees need the right flowers. Jules will always be someone who needs water and plants. And she’s pretty damn sure the Pacific Ocean has to be better than the Atlantic.
“Are you okay?” The woman who served her cone stands in front of her, fingers intertwined.
Jules never closed her eyes, but she did get lost in the kelp for a while. “Fine.” She almost says, I just like to rock. But she doesn’t owe anyone an explanation, and she’s learned this usually results in laughs or more questions.
The woman adjusts her visor with Ashley’s written on the front. She’s nearly as squirmy as Jules and she wasn’t like that a few minutes ago. “I don’t really know how to say this.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t.” Jules swallows another cold lump of ice cream.
“I feel like I should.” She leans against the table. “I mean, I’d want to know.” She bends forward, lowers her voice. “When you walked to your table, I saw that…well, it could be a smudge of mud or chocolate, but it also looked like you might be bleeding through the back of your shorts. Just a little. I mean, it’s not that noticeable.”
Jules squeezes the cone so hard it cracks. She clamps her eyes shut. She’s aware she must look stupid, but this is the only way she can react right now.
“It’s okay,” the woman says. “It took me a while to figure out the rhythm of my cycle.”
Jules’ eyes pop open. “It’s the fucking speculum.” Her words are too loud. She knows this immediately. The woman steps back, looking scared for the first time. Folx at other tables stare at her. They have no idea how much restraint it took for her not to scream.
The woman points to the back. “The restroom’s back there.”
Cool waves of ice cream flow over Jules’ hand where her cone cracked. Kelp have gaseous pockets to keep them floating, but what does she have? She eats a little more of her ice cream while the woman moseys back to the counter. It’s dripping onto her knee now, but she can’t let it go to waste. She eats the last of it so quickly brain freeze ekes through her cheeks and forehead. She crunches through the cone. She sits there for another few seconds, scared there’s a puddle of blood, scared of what she’s going to reveal. But no, it’s not like blood has pooled from the chair to drip onto the floor.
She stands before other anxious images knit their way into her thoughts. The seat is clear. Not a smudge. Whew. Well, it’s a black seat. She steps sideways, then moves backward into the restroom. Before she looks to see how bad the damage is, she texts her friend Addison: tell me who I am?
The response only takes a second: a fucking beautiful neuroqueer
Addison taught her that word—neuroqueer. When Jules first heard it, she got all swoony the way most people do over people. Her body went still. Her chest strummed. Usually, only plants did that for Jules, and only the most majestic plants, often two plants coexisting just perfectly or an animal curled just right into one, like a sea otter kept afloat by kelp. Hearing neuroqueer felt a little like seeing a corpse flower in bloom for the first time. She knew immediately that the flower was one of the most beautiful things she had ever seen, and also that many people would never understand it.
Jules hadn’t even known corpse flowers existed when she was eleven (oh, to be eleven again, when her uterus was so silent). Her mom drove hours for the two of them to stand outside a greenhouse with a blooming corpse flower. Even from the other side of the greenhouse glass, the pungent odor permeated. It didn’t make her quake the way revving motorcycles or T-shirt tags or the smell of celery did. The corpse flower stretched up and out, pushing other plants out of her way. Jules pressed her hands to the glass. Her body went still. She squeezed her mom’s hand, begged to go inside—she needed to touch the plant, hug her—but her mom said tickets inside were more than they could afford. Besides, who wanted to wait in a line like that?
The older she got, the less often Jules encountered something so beautiful that she hadn’t already discovered in a book or online. Until Addison, who Jules met online, uttered neuroqueer over a WhatsApp call.
The word still has the power to bring Jules back. She pushes down her shorts. The damage isn’t that bad. Not really. She was stupid to wear the khaki cargos, especially a pair worn so thin in the bottom, when she has a drawer full of cargos, many of them darker colors. And Ashley’s Ice Cream doesn’t have one of those pad dispensers, so she’s supposed to what?
Her phone buzzes. Addison: what u up to?
Should I be bleeding after pap smear?
Google says it’s a possibility
So I’m not dying?
Not anymore than the rest of us
Jules rolls toilet paper around her hand several times, then breaks it off, shoves it into her underwear. That’ll have to work until she can get to a drug store, which means she’ll be breaking her rule of entering no more than two public indoor spaces per day. Some people like the spoon theory, but Jules is a tree climber. She prefers to say she’s running out of branches. Soon, she’ll be freefalling to the ground. Too bad Addison lives over a thousand miles away.
Stage 3: Ashley’s Ice Cream to CVS
As Jules exits Ashley’s, the woman’s scrubbing her seat. It’s crying moment #2 of the day. Outside, she wipes her face. Tries to ignore the lump of toilet paper already absorbing sweat. Tries to blend the city smells into a corpse flower, pretend there’s a huge fucking corpse flower out on the green and the wind’s carrying its smell in every direction. Maybe she’ll be more alive because of it. Neuroqueer, she repeats to herself as she rides, not sure if it’s the repetition that’s comforting, or if she’s trying to make more space for herself.
The word carries her to CVS, where there’s no bike rack. She locks her bike to a parking meter, the U-lock just barely fitting around the meter’s large belly. She imagines the city without cars or parking meters. A city full of pelotons. A peloton for everyone.
Her phone buzzes. Mom wants to know why she’s not home yet. Coming, she texts back.
Jules steps into her favorite part of CVS. The entranceway. Where all the plants hang out. They’re a sad offering really, if you compare them to the ones at an actual plant store or even Home Depot. But for CVS, they’re nearly miraculous. The most alive things in the store. They live in the space between sliding glass doors, as if surviving on the outside air, as if crossing fully inside would kill them. Jules squeezes the tip of an aloe. She understands.
One more breath and she’s inside, jetting to the feminine products aisle. The lightning bolt’s worked its way up her spine and into her shoulders and neck, sending static shocks. All that electricity speaks the fear that comes true: they don’t have her kind of pads. She buys organic cotton. Free of creepy chemicals. Not the plasticky pads that stick to your ass on summer days and squeak every time you move. This is a need her mom understands and honors; there are things worth spending more money on. She hasn’t yet found a pair of period underwear that fits her specific fabric texture needs or she would have ditched pads altogether.
Jules paces the aisle as if her pads might emerge. She does this long enough an employee asks if she needs help. It’s a question with so many answers, but she understands the intention of his ask is much different than the answers she wants to give. She also understands by the look on his face that he is uncomfortable asking that question at all in this aisle. People say she can’t read people well, but she can always hear discomfort, like a bee buzzing. There are always bees trembling beneath her skin.
She imagines herself a bee, curled into the fibers of a flower. She doesn’t understand much about human cravings for intimacy, at least the physical kind. But the intimacy between a bee and a flower is something she yearns for. To be surrounded by petals, taken in by a plant, hugged by organic fibers. To be part of an essential pollination process keeping entire eco-systems alive.
“Do you need any help?” It’s a female employee this time. Youngish, but probably older than Jules.
“Nope.” She doesn’t want to be asked again. She grabs the smallest package of Always she can find. It’s a stupid name. She will never wear an Always pad again.
Stage 4: CVS to Edgewood Park
She put the pad on in the bathroom and now, hopping onto her bike, she kind of wishes she hadn’t. It grips her ass, sticks funny. Who’s it for? Certainly not her. The stain on her shorts is still there. The burn from the woman at Ashley’s, too. Sure, there’s more hurt out there roiling in the world, but who’s to say that will be worse than the pad that feels like it has adhesive on both sides? And it hasn’t helped the lightning bolt situation any. Maybe she should have pulled a Clan of the Cave Bear move and just bled freely.
She rides down Chapel, a cacophony of honks and brakes and shouts, cigarette smoke and car exhaust. Corpse flower. Turn it all into a corpse flower. She’s headed toward Edgewood Park—the path home. She lets her peripherals blur, focusing on the road in front of her so she won’t get crunched. By a car or car door or fellow biker or motorcycle or rushing pedestrians or dogs or…there is always another or. And for some of the creatures, she is the or—the giant being crushing them under the treads of her tires. The surface area of her bike tires is much less than that of a car, she reassures herself. Still, she watches for caterpillars, beetles. She broke an arm this way once. Her mom locked her bike in the basement for a little over two months. Until someone on the city bus asked if Jules was retarded.
Even with her peripherals blurred, Jules knows where the safe spaces sit. Like a butterfly that must know which bushes she can land on, she knows the quiet spaces she could slip into if need be. Yale Art Gallery. Possible Futures bookstore. She won’t stop today. Because of what her bike seat is hiding. Because she needs the safety of home more than a layover. Her fingers grip the handlebars too tightly. Cramping. She wiggles the fingers of one hand, then another, pedaling farther down Chapel. Edgewood Park’s close. It’s pushing her shoulders down, her head up. Like a bloom, her body always opens up for the park.
She rides over the crosswalk on Ella Grasso, then heads down the hill, tapping her brakes around the curve before letting herself fly. She’s staring through the reeds, out into the duck pond, glancing at an egret, when something clips her pedal and suddenly she’s plummeting toward the blacktop park road, her once-broken arm screaming with remembrance. Her other arm juts forward, brave and unafraid. Her knees help out, too. They crunch into gravel, her elephant socks not long enough to save them. The contents of her cargo shorts pockets lurch forward, exploding to the ground.
This should be screaming moment #6, but she can’t even feel the scream bounce in her stomach. Wonders if she’s getting sick.
“Oh, shit. Sorry.”
She swivels, still in a messy cat-cow position from her fall. It’s another biker. Guy probably, though she can never rule out nonbinary or gender fluid. They’re not wearing a helmet.
“Are you okay?”
Jules groans. The answer to the question is both obvious and not obvious. “I have scrapes.” Her hands, knees. But a worse realization pierces her: she might be the kind of person who never gets a peloton. One little beat of connection with another bike and she’s already on the ground, her bike sideways beside her while they stand beside their bike. Maybe a peloton would just end like getting cut from softball because she was terrified of the ball or from stamp club because she refused to collect stamps with human heads on them.
“Here.” The other biker pulls a handkerchief from their pocket.
“It’ll stain,” she says, shifting to her butt so she can survey the damage. Minor scrapes really. On the outside anyway.
“Oh, I have lots more. You can keep it.”
She takes the handkerchief, presses it to an oozing spot on her knee. At least the burn of the scrapes has dulled the lightning bolt.
“I’ll help you pick everything up.”
Everything is a big word. Handkerchief still pressed to her knee, she swivels to see how far the contents of her pockets exploded. It makes her feel a little like she’s back in the gown again, so much of her on display: her safety whistle, her phone, her Visa card, her ear buds, her pet rock with the wiggly glued-on eyes, exact change for bus fare should something happen to her bike, a compass, a space pen, a tiny notebook, her student ID, her mask, a back-up mask, one of her go-to pads just in case.
Fuck. She forgot it was in there.
“You’re really prepared,” they say. “You go to Southern, too? What’s your major?”
“Interdisciplinary: biology, psychology, and rec and leisure.” She doesn’t say: I’m going to become a horticultural therapist.
“Cool. I haven’t decided yet.” They’re still carefully collecting the items. They scoop up the pad like it’s just as normal as any of the other items. They set all the items in a careful pile beside her, then pick up the pad again.
It occurs to her that before she swiveled onto her butt, they might have seen the blood on her shorts. She adjusts the handkerchief—anything to avoid looking up at them.
“A first aid tip,” they say. “These can actually work really well to stanch bleeding.” Their face squirms. “I mean, in ways other than they’re intended.”
“I’m fine,” she says, wishing they would leave so she could process all of this in silence.
“Of course.” They say it matter-of-factly.
The bees are back. The other biker’s fidgety, but it seems a mutual kind of anxiousness. Neither knows how to end the conversation, what their responsibilities are after a crash. When some members of the peloton crashed yesterday morning, Jules turned off the tv. She didn’t want to see who got left behind, who got dropped from the race.
They set the pad back down into the pile. “I had to use one of those before. Hiking accident. Anyway….” They begin to whistle. “Can I help you up?” They reach out a hand.
“I think I’m just going to stay here for a minute.”
“Should I say with you?”
“No.” The word comes out too fast.
The corners of their mouth pinch downward. “Okay.” They climb onto their bike, pedal forward a few steps, then stop. “I’ve seen you here before. Biking. I’ve tried to say hi a couple times, but you’re so zoned in.”
“Were you biking too?”
“Of course.”
A peloton. Can two bikes be a peloton? But before Jules can gather words—it feels like clipping dead leaves from a potted plant—they’re gone and she’s watching them go in swift strides. Their bike is green. The color of a pine. She missed that before. And she wonders what else she’s missed in her blurred peripherals. Who all she’s drafted off without realizing it. Who’s drafted off her.
Now that the co-executer of the crash is gone, she can see the other people in the park more clearly. The family feeding ducks bread that will make them bloat. The joggers crossing trails, some pretending not to notice her. A flock of Canada geese, a few wood ducks. Nature has its own pelotons, but it’s rare to see humans move with that grace.
She hops up quickly, not wanting to draw more awkward stares. She wipes at the small cuts with the handkerchief. Scoops the contents of her pockets back into their appropriate places. The damn Always pad squeaks with every step. She sinks the handkerchief into her back pocket. Climbs back onto her bike, gently laying her scraped hands on the handlebars. She pedals. Slowly. Trying to unblur her peripherals. See more of the park. Without crashing.
To her left, the Japanese knotweed spring up tall, arching toward her. An almost-hug. They can grow ten centimeters a day during the summer. That’s part of what makes them such a toxic invasive. With other volunteers, Jules has spent part of the summer pulling them up when the ground is wet enough, knocking them out with hand tools when it isn’t. But they always come back. Even the goats the park hired from Florida for two years couldn’t eat them into nonexistence.
When Jules first started volunteering with the team, she felt aggression toward the knotweed, the fierceness with which they grew, knocking out natives. She swung at them so hard her arm muscles quaked and she needed two hands to drink a glass of water. The retired women she volunteered with laughed at her wild abandon. Then Jules realized it wasn’t the knotweed’s fault someone brought them over to North America in the 1800s because they looked attractive. The knotweed live the only way they know how. Jules admires that. They beg her and the other volunteers to continue to return.
She stops now, thwacks her kickstand into place. She climbs into the knotweed, lets them brush her shoulders and hips. They will flower soon. That’s why they’ve been working so hard to cut them back—to keep them from going to seed. No matter how many they knock out, the plants will still return. Corpse flowers bloom once every seven to ten years and when they do, everyone flocks to see them. No privacy. Knotweed bloom every year. What does it feel like to be that prolific? Unable to be eradicated? So present you can be seen without being examined?
She moves deeper into the knotweed. They tickle her cheeks, offer her limbs shade. The burn of her scrapes dulls. She settles her feet into the soft ground. She’s hidden in the knotweed now. Standing in the blurred peripherals of others. In her own blurred peripheral. People pass on the path, jogging or walking, some with strollers in tow. She breathes into the knotweed, feels its roots beneath her feet, grasps its leaves in her palms. She’s heard the knotweed have medicinal properties. She closes her eyes. Lets herself rock.
When she opens her eyes, a woman—maybe her age—is biking by. Skinny legs. Soccer socks. Ear buds. A slow, messy stride, like she’s looking for an eagle in the trees. An almost-doppelganger? A distant peloton? Jules waves, forgetting about the layers of knotweed between her and the path. The woman drifts past.
Then, her mom appears, jogging, looking more graceful than Jules has ever felt. She squeezes the thick stem of a knotweed. Mom’s for once set down her helicopter propellers. Unless she’s running to the gynecologist’s office, tracing Jules’ route. But no, she looks relaxed. Free. Jules waves at Mom. Thinks maybe…but no. She’s buried too deep in knotweed for even Mom to see. Even her bike is camouflaged by knotweed. She can stand here as long as she wants, watching for her peloton.
The knotweed pat her back in the breeze. She fingers the pad in her pocket, knows she could make the change—could do almost anything in this knotweed, so long as she doesn’t scream—without anyone seeing.
Rachel Furey is a neurodivergent writer and Associate Professor at Southern Connecticut State University, where she teaches creative writing, including writing the environment and writing the body courses. Her fiction and nonfiction have appeared in journals such as One Teen Story, Sou’wester, Nimrod International Journal, and Baltimore Review. She’s a winner of The Briar Cliff Review’s Creative Nonfiction contest, Hunger Mountain’s Katherine Paterson Prize, Sycamore Review’s Wabash Prize, and Stone Canoe’s Robert Colley Prize for Fiction.