THE MAN FROM THE MEME

One of my patron saints is the man from the meme.

I learned not to trust images with text on them,

when I learnt from Jules they had been an image,

with text on them, and indeed I'd seen it around,

I knew then I had instinctively trusted the image.

I'd seen the words and believed that you were saying,

I had no defence against it. /// The man from the meme.

He is older, an uncle. I think he is Pakistani.

I don't know why I think he is Pakistani.

It's something in the way he looks. At me.

The man from the meme is looking rather urgently.

He is a large man, but not unduly fat.

The text below him, that is ascribed to him, says

"If you're going through hell, keep going."

"Why would you stop in hell?"

And I imagine the man saying this to me,

in the voice I imagine he has, but which isn't his.

Whose voice is it then?

The voice of the embodiment of the image of this man.

This is the miracle of the saints, their voices.

It's normal that I can hear the voices of the long dead,

but only those ones I have actually met.

If the man from the meme is dead, he lives on in sainthood.

We turn to him in our minds, in our suffering, and he says:

"If you're going through hell, keep going."