Ever since I found out that earthworms have taste buds all over the delicate pink strings of their bodies, I pause dropping apple peels into the compost bin, imagine the dark, writhing ecstasy, the sweetness of apples permeating their pores. I offer beets and parsley, avocado, and melon, the feathery tops of carrots.
I’d always thought theirs a menial life, eyeless and hidden, almost vulgar—though now, it seems, they bear a pleasure so sublime, so decadent, I want to contribute however I can, forgetting, a moment, my place on the menu.

Feeding the Worms by Danusha Laméris

The profound paradox of our own irreplaceability and interchangeability is the enigma of love that we may never fully grasp, but which I think we intuit within our bones when we are in love. When we send love messages, we are addressing more than simply each other; even as we would like to find ourselves marooned alone on a desert island. Your chosen beloved is the most beautiful of all people because she or he so perfectly embodies their kind. They are simultaneously only themselves and the ideal representative of a genus. In other words, no individual is only themselves.

| Dominic Pettman