Long ago I found that the feeling of excitement at kissing someone had a very real taste or sensation to it. Not that I really had this sensation in my mouth - I don't mean the actual taste of the kiss, or rather the mouth of the person I'm kissing. But this sensation that was really hard to pin down and feeling, taste or scent but seemed to be experienced on a physical, internal level.

Of course it's hard to describe. How do you describe the thrill of being about to kiss someone you've been hoping to kiss for ever? Or the sensation of remembering said kiss with excitment?

To me it's an edge of metal with an ozone crackle of lightening. I know this is stupid but... have you ever licked a D battery? the plug end, of course. I don't recommend it; it's something kids dare each other to do. However the copper wire inside what I think is a cadmium case has a peculiar taste that is certainly coppery but - because of the available charge the saliva tranfers to the tongue - caries that flash of metal fire of electricity.

Imagine a metal slide. Imagine sending electricity bolts down along it. It doesn't look like that, it feels like that from the center of my chest swiftly radiating out through my shoulders and collecting in my jaw joints and lower back. It goes through like lightening and it's easily as brilliant.

It's a physical sensation that, if nothing else, tells me when I'm really into a person.


what I'm finding out now is there is faint metal sensation...more smell, colder and wetter, like a chain link fence after a heavy rain, that is what grinding anxiety and heartbreak is like. Not that I've never had my heart broken before. But maybe this is the first time it's been both sudden and (extremely) painful and drawn out by uncertainty. It collects and sits around my shoulders and I could almost miss it except from time to time I really have enough work to do that I can't think about anything else. But when there's a lull in the work I come back to it and I notice it.

It took a while to pin it down. And it could still easily be part hallucination. I've been averaging four hours of sleep over the last month and I don't think I've slept for more than six hours in a single stretch in several weeks. I've sort of had an appetite but it comes and goes and I can rarely finish a full meal. Yeah. I've lost weight. Easy to do when everything tastes like ashes and light, good smells are made a little bitter by the metal.

I don't mind the weight loss too much (I've got more to go anyway) and I find I'm often not tired during the day, even when i only get two hours of sleep.

But I would like to smell sunshine sometime. I would like to taste apples of joy again. I'd like to feel a smile bubble up from inside like electric metal striking out from within.