My tongue craved excitement. A new taste it had never experienced before, something bold, unchartered.  

It was very fond of sweet, but it had quite enough of that. Salty was plenty. Maybe along the lines of a taste more sour, more bitter, perhaps acrid—an unsuspecting new source. But it was more than taste that my tongue hungered for—it craved the experience. It wanted to explore the texture and complexity of that new thing. Smooth and angular. The taste of something gritty, metallic, with burning excitement. What would that be like?  

The wonder kept me from sleep. Outside of my window, in my cozy derelict burrow, the sound of passing trains filled my nightscape—and became my obsession. Day and night I heard their metal wheels slide on the tracks—heard them still even when there were no trains passing. There was nothing more that I craved. My tongue had taken over my thoughts, and I could do nothing else, will nothing else than to slink into the night, harrow down the embankment from my apartment to the train tracks where I found the perfect spot to lay my head. Lay my head and waited—with eyes wild, tongue fevered with excitement, until finally, a train called out in the distance. And as it approached my bare head upon the cold metal track, I closed my eyes and stuck out my tongue.  

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