I used to make out with the household iron. I’d turn it on to Silks and, as it started up, start the fantasy. I’d close my eyes, stick out my tongue, write a wet S, mash it down close to the metal, kiss it hard, try to surprise it, until it got too hot. My lips and tongue, now, are tough, vinyl, and taste is a pale gray thing, a fuzzy tape that I struggle to transcribe.
Caren Beilin's fiction has appeared in Zembla Magazine, will appear in LIT, and is in the current McSweeney's. An essay on how she writes is included in a new book from Rizzoli, How I Write: The Secret Lives of Authors. She lives in Philadelphia.