Hot Cross Buns
Ambling up North Street
on a Saturday afternoon
at the end of a long Winter,
I am stopped by two women,
elderly, smiling eyes and mouths,
lip-sticked, offering an open pack
of hot cross buns from the NISA shop
down the road. The shorter of the two
with red hair folded back behind her head
says: would you like a hot cross bun, dear?
I look, smile back at the kind offer and say:
thank you but I’m gluten free.
She looks me straight in the eye, holds me there
for a long moment and says: Jesus still loves you, dear.
Thank you, I say, still smiling.
Hilary Thompson writes poetry as an everyday occupation.