Even the truffula trees were cut down,
Used to make thneeds sold around town
Once-ler think of the trees,
What even are these thneeds?
Things that everyone must need?
Or the product of careless greed?
Once you see something is special,
You realize it's too late to save it...
Or is it?
We know the story
About the last seed,
And how maybe just maybe
We could bring it all back
The truffula trees and with them love,
Love for the trees
And love for the seas,
And even the buzzing bees,

I am the Lorax, who once spoke for the trees
In the hope of bringing progress to its knees
But now I have grown somewhat older and tired,
My outlook and thought process being rewired
(Sometimes to see forest, you must clear the trees.)

Examine the case of the Brown Bar-ba-loots
Whose interests for so long I worked in cahoots.
Could such timid beasts truly thrive in the wild
So innocent, trusting, submissive, and mild?
(My former assertions I strongly refute.)

Why, see how they frolic and scamper in zoos;
How can one watch them and steadfastly refuse
To see how much better their lot is today
As joy for our children as opposed to prey
(A happy condition where no one can lose.)

Ah, scoff the nihilists, but Truffula Trees,
Those havens for birds and those homes for the bees.
Why, what do you say now that they are all gone,
Removed to make way for some suburban lawn?
(These angry young men—O Lord, take them all please!)

I gently remind them it’s just nature’s way,
That some species go while other ones stay,
The carrier pigeon’s no longer alive
Yet somehow we manage to live—indeed, thrive!
(In the face of brute logic, they’ve little to say.)

So don’t be dismayed or frightened or leery
Of doomsday projections outlined by theory
Suggesting that our time on this earth may be done;
Consider the caged Bar-ba-loot having fun
(And we hear fish do quite well in Lake Erie.)

i want to live in a world with truffula trees,
and caroling who's,
cats that balance objects on their head,
and raining green goo.

i want star-bellied sneetches,
dancing on beaches,
and colors,
on everything.

i want green eggs and ham,
offered by sam-i-am,
and a lorax to use sarcasm on me.

i want to escape reality,
and where better than childhood memories.

I felt empty. I didn’t know how to explain it either, I felt empty in the most hopeful way. My dancing skin cells all ached for you, and while I knew that sooner or later you would be in my arms, in that moment I still felt so empty without you.

It had been four hours since the blue, flowered tab dissolved under my tongue. The bitter taste of it was gone and I was left with a distorted world and the attention span of a goldfish.

I found myself in a park searching for you. I don’t remember how I got there. From the top of the slide I watched a filmstrip in the streetlight’s glare; two people were holding each other, they were dancing and smiling and laughing. I watched the patterns in the snow. I watched the tree branches grow and shrink, curling themselves like contortionists and I finally understood Dr. Seuss’s secret to writing his books. His worlds were not reality and this wasn’t either.

There was a person next to me. I don’t know when he got there. I knew him, but I might as well not have; he was just as much as a stranger as any.

“See that house over there?” I found myself saying, “Their sidewalk is moving. We should tell them their sidewalk is moving. They should call somebody about that.”

We burst into laughter.

In reality, their sidewalk was not moving. But this was not reality, and their sidewalk was turning over itself like it was ribbon instead of cement.

I got bored of the Truffula Trees. I parachuted down the slide to follow the footprints in the snow, footprints I was entirely sure were from the Star-Bellied Sneeches. They led me down street after street, I could not read the signs because of the flashing lights that overtook my vision.

I stopped in the middle of the street where the ground was a thick layer of ice. The stranger asked me how I was feeling, I replied with “I don’t even know where I am right now,” a saying not uncommon to come out of my mouth.

I couldn’t tell if it was five minutes or three hours later, but we were back at an apartment familiar to me. It was the stranger’s. You were still nowhere to be found, and the daydreams of your lips on my neck were driving me crazy. Even in this unreal world, I still remembered your taste and there was nothing I needed more.

For hours I watched the ceiling and the walls, silent. The world had been carved from crayons and somebody had a giant blowdryer to melt it all. I watched as the walls drip, drip, dripped onto the floor.

A light from somewhere else turned on and it was reflecting with the already glaring light.
“I feel like I’m inside of a CD,” I said to the stranger, trying to make him understand my Dr. Seuss world. “The lights are jumping everywhere, like the lights when you hold a CD in the sun. Do you hear the music too?”

With the empty feeling, the crayon walls and ceiling, and the jumping lights, I had to close my eyes. It felt so nice. I wanted reality back. I watched the kaleidoscope on the inside of my eyelids and tried to sleep.

I still wondered where you were. I wondered why anything would stop us from being together right now, why is there a force in the world that could willingly take my home away from me? Without you, I realized I am nothing more than cells escaping the body they form; I am not a being but rather a mind living in an alternate reality. In the Dr. Seuss world I float, in the real world I am anchored to you.

As I drifted off to sleep, hoping to wake up in the real world because I was sick of the patterns moving on inanimate objects, your words hung in my ear. “Goodnight my beautiful girl, I love you so.”

You are my home. I am empty, aimless, and unreal without you. I do not find comfort in Dr. Seuss’s worlds, nor do I find comfort in the real world.

When the world is made of melting crayon and my cells are bouncing out of their perimeters, you are real and you are refuge for the lost and drugged girl.

“Goodnight my beautiful girl, I love you so.” The words tasted so sweet I almost wanted to cry.