She got her mail at the liquor store so that’s where I sent it. I had gotten the package she sent me a few days before. Inside was an envelope covered in lipstick kisses and a small metal box, a little larger than a cigarette pack. When I opened the metal box I found a Polaroid of her naked and the dried body of a monarch butterfly. The lipstick covered envelope held a pair of her underwear, black, soft, as she said they would be. So as she requested I sent her a pair of my underwear. Over the next two weeks we sent each other pictures, me smelling her underwear, her smelling mine, or wearing them, or putting them in her mouth.

We decided to meet in Portland. I drove the 14 hours overnight and picked her up at the airport at noon. She had barely slept either. I had planned on kissing her before she could say anything but she got a few words out. I interrupted her and we stood kissing, the door of my car open. It went on like that, the kissing, I drove the highway with one eye watching the road, her pulling my mouth into hers.

As soon as we got into the city we found a Motel 6. She said she loved them, said she wished she could live in one. She wanted me to double fist her, she said she had never had that happen. I did. Later we ate pizza in bed while crime shows played on the television.

In a basic animal way I needed it, not just the sex but all of it: the wet snow and the ocean, the motel room, the falling asleep with the television on, and the morning waking up to her, some generosity of circumstance and light. We walked by a lighthouse, the wind coming in off the water hurt my ears and nose and hurt the place between my eyes. She laughed at my red face. We kissed. To do this, to present it in a list of facts, is to diminish it. We called each other angel, there was kindness. It wasn’t forever and maybe that was the best gift of all, that kindness without the weight.