Poetry Her Red Shopping Bag

She was adamant:
if they wouldn’t
let her hold
her red shopping bag,
she was not having
her photograph taken.

The bag held her treasure:
her well-worn doll,
her bag of soft-centres,
her framed picture of Mum,

the eternally-unfinished knitting,
the book of Makaton signs,
the clean underwear
she’d been taught to always carry.

The photograph needed her:
she was the tall,
pretty one
with a lopsided smile
that lit up on request

softened your heart like no other.

As events unfolded,
she graced the ensemble
with precocious
childlike innocence
and her red shopping bag
made a great focal point.