I was slouching down asphalt, past fault dragging on my Timberlands, With a dead earbud and a couple pins missing from the cylinder. I flicked a Bic to get the roach tip lit, resin burning on a concrete coffin, My stomach was growling, week bled down, and I didn't have a dollar left. The sidewalk pulse had my ankle joints clicking like a ratchet gear tick, While a sewer grate bubbled with a sludge slick, green venom leaking from the pipe. Two blind carp floated out of gutter water, glowing neon in streetlamp light, Hissing in my ex's voice, like an argument down the hallway: "One fish, two fish, trapped in a rusty tub, floor rots while you measure size! Both flopping in stagnant sludge, gills working overtime to stay alive!" I froze up stiff with smoke in my lungs, heart banging like a rabbit on my ribs, While the fish leaned close with a breath like kelp, spitting truth through a mouthful of fibs: "You're terrified of stepping past the rim, so you sit in the dark and drown like a fool." Then a plywood fence snapped open and striped pine trunks shot up through the grid, And a fox hopped out of a dumpster in mismatched socks, holding a cardboard lid. He was serving up a plate of bright green eggs and a twitching slab of green ham, Steam rising off sulfur yolk while the bastard grinned like a scamming man. He had a quick-talking, slick-jaw, click-clack, snap-back, slot-machine pay: "Try the green eggs and ham, kid!" Backed off gagging: "Get that nasty shit off my tray!" Slammed the lid down with a switchblade tongue: "That's why you're stuck in the mud! Every odd option makes your gut turn, so you freeze right up and chew on your cud! Quiet refusal is a slow leak, drowning your boat while you wait for weather to clear! Side-eyeing green eggs and ham just because it looks off leaves you starving at a feast! You'd rather die comfortable swallowing dust than risk a fresh dish from the beast!" Then the Cat in the Hat exploded through the grid, spinning like a top at Mach ten, Things One and Two jumping out of a vortex, laughing like hyenas in a panther's den. Tearing up fences and kicking up gravel, click-clack, split-back, scatter in snow, Locking up your soul in an eight-by-ten booth, trying to keep the front parlor presentable, Stop sanitizing every second you borrow, drowning in sorrow, waiting for tomorrow! Clinging to the wheel and panicking hard while the axle snaps clean off the curb stone, Real life never starts in a tidy house, it shows up when the whole foundation gets blown! Burn down the manual, swallow the ash, and crash through drywall with brutal velocity, Got sweat stinging my eyes, breathing through commas, heart hammering wild in a flash, Fast-track, crack back, stack that, pack that, match that, track that all through the night, Losing my grip on the life I organized, throwing out the blueprint, stepping in the light! Then everything slowed way down. The air got thick like wool soaked in warm honey, The Lorax stepped out of the haze, ancient and grimy, mustache yellowed from tobacco, His knuckles calloused and weathered, like a welder forty years at the shipyard. He pressed a rough palm dead-center on my breastbone, right over my pulsing muscle, My heart was thumping wild inside my ribs like an engine throwing a rod in a hustle. His voice was a low raspy gravel, quiet like an old sergeant talking on a break: "You get one Truffula seed, kid. Don't go planting that thing just to hunt for a paycheck. Don't bury your guts trying to impress a crowd that doesn't know your real name, Or build a plastic life out of drywall screws to play along with somebody else's game. Speak for your own chest before asphalt covers up every single square inch of dirt, Tragedy isn't the mess you make trying—it's sitting on your hands while your lungs hurt." The neon washed out and streetlights clicked off, leaving the gray morning cold and flat, I woke up slumped on a bus bench, cheek stuck down to a stale coffee spot, My mouth tasted like burnt copper and zinc, head throbbing under my beanie, Crammed my right hand inside my coat pocket... expecting a receipt that was empty... But my fingers hit a heavy Truffula seed, rough and spiked, sitting right in my palm. Was it a fever dream off an eighty-hour week, or my mind breaking through the calm? The words stayed heavy under my jacket though: stop hiding behind a safe routine, Plant the seed deep, let chaos break the cage, and speak your mind before forty-three. Maybe I was just hallucinating from no sleep and a half-burnt roach... But if the seed stayed behind right here in my fist... what the fuck am I supposed to approach?
