When we set out we knew nothing of loss other than losing the unfavourable circumstance: here was a circle, home and we went past the circumference in search of a place that could finally hold us. How it advanced as we approached, facing away. We saw loss before we saw any gain, we understood the distance of the stars well before we could understand their use. The world was second, the loss came first. It retreated before the sweep of our cartography into the softness of shadow and the vacuum of silence, like the Lilith side of the moon.

V. B. Borjen (he/they) is a Yugoslav-born writer and visual artist based in the Czech Republic. His first poetry collection in Bosnian (Priručnik za levitiranje, en. Levitation Handbook) won the 2012 Mak Dizdar Award. His work in English and visual art have been featured in EcoTheo Review, Folio, Rattle, The Maine Review, AZURE, IceFloe Press, Parentheses and elsewhere. He serves as Guest Editor of Palette and Frontierpoetry magazines. Tweets @Borjen