(Image: Moum Harry, Mölndals stadsmuseum)

shadow on the things you know

i am playing the piano broken keys off-tune out of time but still i am playing to neil young with voice broken muted black keys white spaces between when you see me fly away without you notes a dissonance and harmony occasional you hear the piano from the next room and my voice broken off-tune out of time you recognise the song shadow on the things you know you are standing beside me now you are putting your hand on my shoulder your hand with fingers graceful ring-worn are on my shoulder and i am singing broken off-tune out of time feathers fall around you and you are singing now too show you the way to go we are singing broken off-tune out of time raw together in the mapless present untrained clawing out meaning from crisis it’s over we are singing jagged we are singing raw off-tune out of time it’s over broken off-tune together out of time it’s over you are crying now you are heaving body dark-chested you are telling me that this is the song you used to listen to many years ago scared and alone and hiding this is the song you used to sing shadows on the things you know and you are crying now in the remembering feathers fall around you and you are heaving body dark-chested not in the disappearing but in the remembering off-tune out of time together

Jack Young is from Nottingham and currently lives in Barcelona,where he is co-founder of multilingual literary collective Anemone. He is interested in writing that crosses boundaries of genre and form in order to open up new spaces, within which to articulate the fractured nature of experience and loss. He is particularly interested in the translations of memory and trauma
and the lacunas- such as silences- that exist between these translations. His current writing focuses on identity; familial relationships and care and he is in the process of writing a novel exploring these themes. Alongside writing, he also works with young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds, where he develops arts-based critical pedagogy with a particular emphasis on multilingual filmmaking, applied theatre and creative writing. Website: https://www.jackmyoung.net/ Twitter: @JMDemus