Souvenir.

"So did you bring them?" I asked her as I sipped her iced tea.

She'd just added two spoonfuls of sugar to the mix after claiming no one in the world understood sweet things should be *really* sweet. I took a sip and immediately I wanted to throw up from that overwhelming sensation of feeling like you are drinking sugar syrup.

"I did bring them," she said taking her tea back from my hands and handing my coffee back to me, "I'm still not sure why the hell you want them though and I'm not sure why you drink this garbage, it's fucking bitter."

She made me chuckle even though anyone else in the world dissing coffee might genuinely offend me. She was incapable of offending me because I liked her since the moment I met her. Instantly, we were able to talk about anything. Maybe it's just because when I'm home in the mountains, my usual brand of zen neuroticism is just replaced by my brand of calm, casual and quiet acceptance of just whatever. This town knows me as the girl who had to be forced into shoes by strangers, I don't have to put up any pretence here. Just earlier today I sat on the side of the road and had lunch under an abandoned table and two people remarked at how I would always do the same shit no matter how much I grew up. Two people I have just *accidentally* known my whole life. That's small town life.

Yesterday I took ill atop a mountain that has no connectivity and before I had made it back down, half my family already knew what had happened. I told no one except the people with me and the herders who helped me out, I don't know if they sent word with the goats or they have perfected journalism to the point where you don't even *hear* them relay information but it happened because that's what happens here. I took a bus earlier today from a tiny village to another tiny village and everyone on the bus knew which house I had come from and why I was there and how often I was there and who I was. It wasn't gossip, it was just.. there is a sign at the entrance of this town that states its name and its population which is 1436 people (and while 1400 is low in any country, this is India with it's 1.2 billion people, 1436 is uninhabited) and that's what it is. That's what drives communication: Everyone knows everything because everything is happening right in front of you, and right in front me was her confusion, plain as day.

She's delightful but we are aliens who have the power to communicate with one another but our parts don't match up.

"Give them to me then," I asked her, "Please."

I like saying please even when the situations don't warrant it. I said please when I wanted to suck on her toes the previous night. I said please when I wanted to put my tongue in her ass and I said please then, when unbeknownst to her, I wanted to say goodbye.

"You know they aren't washed, right?" She asked, clearly feeling the same kind of embarrassments she felt the previous night when I unbuttoned her jeans and she tugged on my ear and whispered that she hadn't shaved.

I felt the same thing in response both times. The overwhelming desire to roll my eyes. I don't know who the fuck is responsible for creating the notion that cunts should be shaved but whoever it was, if I find out, I will end them. It's like the point of hair is lost to you. I mean, I know I shave mine but that's because I'm not vying for human, sexually speaking. That makes sense in my head. I am vying for object, service, property and that associates well with that shaving as a manner of principle. I have been having sex for three days straight and I haven't once taken off my clothes because the person fucking me doesn't want to put anything inside me and I don't have any desire to be pleased. That's just how I do it. I don't need anyone getting attracted to my cunt, that's weird. I will however grow it out for a statement and/or to be humiliated for it. Hair is complicated but it's easy for me to easy that I like being with some hair on them and I like people with no hair on them and I don't like people apologizing for either. Just like I don't like people apologizing for worn underwear. Why the fuck is it disgusting the second you take it off?

"That's kind of the point," I told her, "Now give them to me, please."

"Here?" She asked mildly appalled, "There are so many people around."

"You didn't seem to care how many people were watching when you were coming in my mouth in the spotlight of streetlight on the roof last night," I said, "Not so much on the stairway either..."

She really didn't and I appreciate that. It was fantastic and the most sex I have ever had with a person who identifies as asexual. Also, probably, the most orgasms I have ever given a person. Give me a fucking woman who doesn't mind me spending the entire day and most of the night down there, please. Or a man with a vagina who wants the same thing. Or a woman with a cock. Whatever. Just, put it in my mouth, you know. I love a person who will just do that. Though she did, at one point, pull me out of the covers and ask if I was tired. I'm always surprised when complete strangers don't know me intimately enough to know everything about me. Unreasonable, I know, but it startles me.

"Just give me your bag and I'll put them in," she said snarling at me.

"If there was a sadistic bone in my body I'd make you put them on the table," I told her, but as I did I passed her my bag because there really isn't a sadistic bone in my body.

"And if there was a sadistic bone in mine you would have way more sex with me," she said pushing something into my bag with discretion and propriety.

That's why I like her and sometimes him. She and sometimes he is a stranger who does understand me just like that. Like we didn't just meet four days ago on tinder and in front of a monastery almost accidentally at the same time.

"What the fuck are you going to do with them anyway?" She asked, still genuinely confused because she's charmingly naive like that and remarkably perceptive at the same time.

"I'll put them in my mouth later," I told her, "I'll send you pictures?"

She laughers.

"Come on," she said, "Tell me the real reason."

That was the real reason but I'm happy to invent a little love and colour for the sake of living poetically.

"Think of it as a souvenir, I suppose," I told her, "Of a weird moment in a magical place."

"Don't say that," she said, with a furrowed brow and her burgundy-purple hair flying in the wind and glowing in the afternoon sun, "That means we'll never see each other again."

I looked at her way too long, or maybe that is how I felt. For some reason I kept thinking about her hand finding mine as we lay together and my spine tensing up immediately.

"Danny boy," I said holding her and hand from across the table, "We're not going to see each other again."

She looked a little angry and he looked a little sad. They looked exactly as they felt on top of me— softer than you thought they were.

"Oh we'll see each other again," she said suddenly smiling, "I still have your socks and I'm washing those before I give them back."

I wanted to tell her some dreams are just inconceivable. Some people are perfect and not meant to be. I wanted to tell her we'd be okay friends and okay lovers even though she's amazing and I love everything about her. From the taste of her skin to the thoughts on her tongue. I wanted to say so much.

"Can I at least sniff them first?"

That's all I could say.