TRANSUBSTANTIATION

the grief they say is in the ancilla ... the hairbrush the dish the care you gave before she died ... let me tempt no large sorrow here but a small one though very deep ... no extensive loss of wife or children or parent no brother or sister or friend but family though just a family pet ... what's missing when she's not there beside the bowl or the place on the landing or by the window where she'd wait till you came home ... what's not there beside the black fur or the deep purr or the sideways stroking of her neck on your hand or most of all the wide-open round eyes in the patient face on the tense body ... what's not there beside these that still remain with you in your mind in the air or the space she still fills ... what's missing that she is ... or is it was ... or that's the point ... for this is a being unlike all the other stray pieces of her being ... traces that attract your attention and fix her in your mind but not her ... the being you mean to mourn ... isn't that what pets are for to teach their children and adults the distinction between the accidental and the essence ... there's a movement of substance from here to some place else that wounds ... even as the largest movement back is the one that heals

for plato