Tiny puppy whimpers remind every piece of my body how much I am not a mother. 

Nothing wrenches in my gut at the sound. 

Nothing spills out of my chest to nourish a physical hunger. 

Nothing about the thin sounds of a four-pawed little one learning to say her piece with the rising sun makes me mom. 

Somehow, her small shrieks bite harder than her tiny playful teeth. Her helpless, little whining hits my heart with a heaviness enough to tickle a bruise that no amount of time passed has ever healed completely. 

Wrapping my aging body around any one of the three fur-covered rescues who make our house a home sometimes feels like checking my mailbox every winter for Christmas cards from heaven.

And

Nothing falls down my cheeks from lash to lip like the longing to hold an unborn dream.