“How many tickles does it take to make an octopus laugh? Ten tickles”

If you were here, if you had not collapsed at the kitchen table that day, I can’t tell you how
often I’d beg to make the bed with you. I’d even let you tuck your navy corners. The many
times I’d squeal – equal parts preparation and reckless giggle – for thick-fingered tickles,
like the cat in that YouTube video. Hands up, tummy exposed, a gleeful shrill that outdoes
the last. If weighed, my worship would be heavier than a Lincoln Town Car. If a lightbulb, it
would take a hundred God-fearing men to change me. If it were a dead parent, I would take
a child’s entire lifetime to decay. My worship does not underestimate itself. It knows how to
rescue the wake of a young summer, turn it blind into the oncoming tidal waves of a make-
able future. Ours. If you need further proof of my devotion, alive and kicking fiercely in an
ensuing childhood in which you did not leave, let me say you’d need the arms of an octopus
to hug me the way I’ve always wanted. And we could laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh laugh
with our bellies until Mom looked at us like we were two unhinged Argonauts with a ten-
dacy to veer off path when tidying up the living room, losing ourselves in a war of tickles.