8 months pregnant and shaking, I was mocked and denied a seat by laughing college boys while the bus driver ignored me. Moments later, a ninety-pound German Shepherd boarded—and unlike everyone else, it refused to look away.

8 months pregnant and shaking, I was mocked and denied a seat by laughing college boys while the bus driver ignored me. Moments later, a ninety-pound German Shepherd boarded—and unlike everyone else, it refused to look away.
CHAPTER ONE – THE KIND OF HEAT THAT MAKES YOU SMALL

Late summer in the city has a way of pressing down on you until you feel flattened, not just physically but emotionally, as though the air itself has decided you don’t deserve to breathe easily today, and for someone who is eight months pregnant, carrying a life that constantly shifts and presses and reminds you that your own body is no longer entirely yours, that pressure becomes something intimate and exhausting and relentless.