“Lion”
by J. Hughes
As a child, I was lost at the zoo,
and found myself looking into the sad eyes of an old, lady lion.
I was not afraid of the lion, but of being lost. Of being somewhere unknown.
She seemed to know that fear, the lion.
As if she had once been somewhere she didn’t belong, somewhere she didn’t know.
Her eyes had once been filled with those same tears that now filled mine.
Maybe she was still there.
Maybe that’s why her eyes remained sad.