“I began to feel as if we were merging with one another. The process was more than simply emotional. It was biological, systemic. Each of our bodies was a biosphere, slick with bacterial and insect life. Reteamed, and what we teamed with brought us closer not only to each other, but to the ecosystem we inhabited, fed off, and nourished. Bacteria bred in the ooze of our waste, our discarded food remains and puddled shit, then travelled onto us and between us, carried not only on the thickened air, but by the fleas and lice that hopped and crawled from one body to another. There was no difference, I began to think, between the puddles on the floor and the streaks of filth on my skin and the acne that erupted on Margot’s face. It was all just life, matter, the biome. We were leaking out into the world, and the pooled primordial essence of the world was soaking back into us in turn. (p.235)”