C O N F E R E N C E W I T H T H E L O R A X

instagram is not distorting your perception of self,

YOU ARE ACTUALLY UGLY! makes for bad conversation at brunch.

out there, eight billion lungs are swelling in jam-jars,

are you sure, when it comes down to the crunch,

that yours are anything more than just barely breathing?

no new loves and no new jokes, your tongue would be happier

trapped in your mouth, if you gave up the chips and the smokes!

you’re something worse than a psychopath? you’re just really boring?

you miss it not being weird to hold your dad’s hand.

now, you could be his much younger girlfriend.

you feel nauseous, you can’t understand

what it’s like to fall asleep in the car,

road humming, the purr of the news.

you can’t anymore. you just don’t believe in good people.

you’ve misplaced your lelli-kelly cutest shoes.

now, you sext in the bathroom of grimy train stations.

you drop misleading statistics in the reddit chat.

you do fuck-all about the trees. god, the lorax would loathe you.

would you look in his sorry blue eyes and talk back?

gawk at the yellow tufts of his gravity-defying moustache?

tell him about your overuse of the printer? your petrol run-heart?

he’d say talk to the trunks and the leaves, the branches and breeze!

would you ask him if you could do it all over? limp back to the start?

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Eloise Rodger

Eloise Rodger is a writer and recently edited Icarus., and currently working on a trilogy that explores the peculiarities of growing up with Jessica Sharkey.