I think that society does not demand enough of the grown-ups in the world to model empathetic and creative behavior. I think that grown-ups say terrible things like, “I can’t draw,” and then don’t understand why kids put down their crayons.

There’s no such thing as a “wrong” drawing. It’s an experience! Drawing is physicalized empathy.

At my home, we roll out a big block of butcher paper on the dining room table and we draw after dinner. Guests, too! Everyone does their own thing: some draw realistically, some cartoony, some abstractly. My father-in-law creates these wildly colored spreadsheets. Awesome!

This activity, it’s an hour without screens. It’s talking at the table. One of the best parts of life is being with other people and communicating with them and sharing with them. The idea that you get to do that and make marks on paper is incredible!

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