The Book of Form and Emptiness

by Ruth Ozeki

then he lay down on his stomach beside her. It was their signal for her to tickle his back, so she slipped her hand under his sweatshirt and began running her fingernails lightly in circles. He closed his eyes. His head was turned toward her, and she gazed at his profile, the high cheekbones, the cast of his eye. He had his father’s coloring, but his freckles were hers. He was beautiful, still just a boy, but changing fast. She brushed the fine coppery hair from his brow, and he frowned. He wanted his back tickled, not his forehead, and he hated when she got distracted. When Kenji was alive, Benny used to lie between them, and they would take turns. Kenji had a special way of doing it. He used to sing soft riffs of scat and bebop, fingering his son’s delicate spine like a clarinet, but Benny didn’t like it when Annabelle tried this. “You don’t know how,” he complained, squirming out from under her fingers, and so she had to find her own way. Her way, the way she’d figured out to do it, was to trace big spirals on his back in time to the music, starting wide and moving slowly inward toward the center. Benny approved. He loved the scratchiness of her nails. They were like needles going round and round. They made his back feel like vinyl, drawing music from his skin, like it was singing.

yess!!!!! best feeling in the world