Ocean Of Need

❤️ June 40 🖤 Navy

1st June Continued...

My phone rings, and my heart jumps, 'Mac?' I shout down the phone.

'Lilah? It's Jameson. How are you Baby Girl?'

'Oh Daddy, I'm not doing great.'

'Ah. What happened?'

I don't want to tell him about Mac. Don't want my fears turned into a real thing. Don't want to explain that there are secret parts of myself that may be about to explode into the light.

So I say, 'Oh, just, you know how I get some times.'

'Blue?' He asks, reminding me of how close we are. How many times have we had this conversation when the darkness takes me?

'Darker than that,' I say, wondering if I should tell him about Mac. Have if I've let him down by trusting Mac?

'How dark, Baby Girl?'

I smile down the line, I always feel safe when he calls me Baby Girl. 'I don't know. Maybe navy,' I say.

Should I warn him? But Mac could just be caught up on a job and can't call me, no matter how much he wants to. No one knows where Jameson is right now. That means he's safe.

'Not black though?' He asks.

'No. Not black.'

'Good. 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, can we?'

I smile down the line. This is not the first time we've had this particular conversation. He talks to me in lullabies and his descriptions of moods and colours always soothe me. This has become our lullaby, the colours of the ocean.

I hold the phone closer and say, 'No Daddy, we can't have that.'

'Listen Baby, I want you to go to Freya's 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 Mac. Because he is my safe space. My protector. The one that always picks me up when I am any shade of blue.
'Baby Girl promise me you'll get on your bike and drive slowly to Freya's house.'

'I promise.'

'I'll see you soon, Baby.'

'Bye Daddy.'

He's gone, but he's left me with a life raft. A promise that I know he won't break. Once he comes here we can start working again. Things can 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 Mac. 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. Me and Jameson can go back to laughing at them while we clean out their cash.

I don't need to be a poet. It was just a ridiculous dream. Mac was never real. Just a player who got out of his depth and then cut and ran. Maybe I should stop believing in stupid fairy tales, because we all know that just can't be.