Ocean Of Need

37 Daddy

29th May

I clack away at the typewriter and after a while it makes a rhythm of, 'Where are you? Where the fuck are you? Why do you keep disappearing? Why do I care so much?'

It's been over two weeks this time. Two fucking weeks. No messages, nothing. I've tried calling you repeatedly, but your phone doesn't even ring, let alone send me to an answer service.

I don't want to be at Freya's right now. I'm spending all my time here, in our room. I want to be here, so I know the moment you return. So that maybe this awful pain, this missing of you, will stop.

At this point should I be checking the hospitals? And how is it that I don't know your surname? Are you dead? Or am I delusional?

I asked Roxy to put the word out, to find out if anyone's seen you at Unleashed. No one has. Roxy has been a trouper through all this. You were wrong about her. She's the one that keeps me going. Keeps turning up at the room with take-out, or wine, or anything she thinks will get me through.

I haven't accepted anything stronger than a spliff from her, not since last time, with the blue pill. But now I'm wondering, was she really trying to drive a wedge between us, or were you trying to drive a wedge between me and her? Did it serve you better to keep me isolated so that you could keep me all to yourself?

But, if that's the case, why aren't you here? Where the fuck are you MaCallan, and for how much longer do you expect me to wait for you?

I've asked Freya if she knows where you are, but she just keeps banging on about how we're all free spirits and that you'll blow back in on the wind when you're ready.

Bloody Americans. Everyone here is so chill with everything. That's what I love about you. You're not chill about anything. You operate with intensity. Your dark mind matches mine. But now you're gone and you have left no lights on.

I stop clacking. I can't hear my own thoughts, let alone put together a poem. I can't eat, can't sleep. My stomach feels hollow, and not from lack of food.

I ache deep in my soul. Each time you go missing you take part of me with you. It's more than missing you. You are missing from me.
It feels like it's only you that validates my existence. All of my strength has gone with you, all of my happiness too. I know this is not normal. I know it's to do with my need. My ache. But I do feel like you've cultivated this ache, and left me alone with it, eating into my bones, my thoughts, everything.

You leave me alone in our room. Over and over again. The room that is coated with your paintings of me. My longing stares at me from every wall and corner. I stare back at myself trapped inside a frame, and wonder, how will I ever be a three dimensional person again?

My phone rings, and my heart soars, 'Macallan?'

'Amber. It's me. Jameson. How are you Baby Girl?'

'Oh Daddy, I'm so sad.'

'Ah. What happened?'

I don't want to tell him about you. Don't want my fears turned into a real thing, so I say, 'Oh, just, you know how I get some times.'

'Blue?'

'Darker than that?'

'How dark, Baby Girl?'

'I don't know. Maybe navy.'

'Not black though?'

'No. Not black daddy.'

'Good then. Navy you can blend with light and become the colour of the ocean. Black would just turn to grey, and we can't have that.'

I smile down the line. This is not the first time we've had this particular conversation and Jameson's descriptions of moods and colours always make me smile. He always knows how to talk to me in lullabies. And this has become our lullaby, the colours of the ocean lullaby.

I smile down the line, 'Yes Daddy.'

'Now, listen Baby, I want you to go home to Freya now. Tell her how you're feeling. She'll understand. She'll take care of you, till I get there.'

'When are you coming Daddy?'

'Soon Baby. I'm coming soon. I promise, and you know I always keep my promises.'

'I do.' And I do know that. And now I want Jameson here, more even than you. Because he is my safe space. My protector. The one that always picks me up when I am any shade of blue.

'Promise me, Baby Girl. Promise me you'll get on your bike and drive slowly to Freya's house when you put down the phone.'

'I promise.'

'I'll see you soon, Baby.'

'Bye Daddy.'

And he's gone, but he's left me with a life raft. A promise that soon he'll be here. Maybe once he comes here we can start working again. Maybe things will go back to normal. Maybe I'll go back to normal.

I can go back to pretending to be an empty vessel of a doll, and stop all this striving to be something I'm not. I can forget poetry and art and you. I can hustle and run, and ruin these men who think they know how to play my game, while not knowing what game they're playing, while me and Jameson laugh at them and clean out their cash.

I don't need a clean slate. I don't need to be a poet. It was just a ridiculous dream. Because if you're not here, maybe you are not real, and maybe I should stop believing in stupid fairy tales.