Erin O'daniel is a gender expansive Queer Writing in Duluth (stolen Anishinaabe land), Minnesota

Northern/Southern Exposures

it was no longer a matter of sex.

this new molecular relationship made distance and intimacy words

that tangled.

or to say it another way.

we were all close.

beyond close.

not knowing where one person ended and another began was no

longer love-song advertising or evidence of codependency.

it was a real issue. so then identity (x=x) was no longer technically

true. the previous energetic reality of how we are not whole and

change each other and are not ourselves except in the most lim-

ited version of our imagination became impossible to ignore on

the physical level.

so love was not about merging or finding exceptional moments

when we could die enough to shrug off the pain of individuality.

it was just a certain sound, a vibration, and when we achieved it,

it really was all of us.

-alexis pauline gumbs, M archive

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Thought Experiments- Settler Sex