Florentino meets Sara Noriega at the annual Poetic Festival, where she feels sorry for him because she understands that the poem he submitted was not chosen. After her fiancé abandoned Sara when she was young, she decided to devote herself to sex, even if it does not involve marriage. Florentino and Sara share a love for love poetry and develop a long-term affair, in which they alternate sex with Noriega’s poetic recitations. She allows him to forget about Fermina for a while, but when Florentino realizes she has aged and becomes bored with her, he plans to break up with her. However, she breaks up with him before he has the chance to do so, thus becoming the only woman besides Fermina who ever rejects Florentino.