Sometimes, I miss you

Sometimes, I don't.

Sometimes, I want to be in the thick of it, of everything, and smell all the world's colors and taste all the world's sounds. I want to breathe it. I want to feel it. I want to know it. I want to live it. I want it. I want.

Sometimes, I want to get the hell out of this town. I want to peel off every flake of this old skin. I want to wash away the residue of everything I've known. I don't want this. I don't want now. I don't want you. I want to run away and crash in the black arms of an impersonal shadow.

Sometimes, I want you to smell me when your nose hits that patch on your pillow. I want you to hear me in the dying echoes of fall wind and thunderstorms. I want you to feel my phantom fingers tracing ghost trails on your neck.

Sometimes, I don't want you to know me. I want to be that memory teetering on the brink of recall, that idea nested in the cobwebs of grade school and first ice cream cones. I want to be that taste of deja vu. I want to be the whisper of lyrics on your lips when you didn't think you knew the song. I want to be the apparition of familiarity.

Sometimes, I breathe in. Sometimes, I breathe out.

Sometimes, I realize I'm just a ticking time bomb. Sometimes, I realize I'm already out of time.

Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock.