Lion
July 20, 2020
What’s It Good For?
part three (of four)
One night a few weeks ago, after spending all day in this room, I went upstairs and put on my bandanna and baseball cap and took the dog outside.
I encountered a man. He was entering the alley from the street just as I was entering it from the small parking lot behind our building. He had been saying something but I didn’t catch it. He was carrying something on his shoulders. He spoke again.
“What is this?” he asked me.
“Looks like a lion,” I said. It was just the two of us out there, no one else around.
“But what’s it good for?” he asked.
Not counting the three people who live with me, this was already the longest in-person conversation I’d had in months, since this all began.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Fuck it,” he said and put it down. We went our separate ways.
(continued)
Cardboard Gods 
I’d love to know why he was carrying around a random lion… where he found it… and how long he carried it for.