The Border in My Mind // Lyubka in Asymptote
The Border in My Mind
Andriy Lyubka
Artwork by Alice Yu Deng
I was born in Riga, but not “abroad.” At least, that’s what my mother thought. From a formal point of view, she was correct: in the times of the Soviet Union, there were no borders between Ukraine and Latvia, so a Zakarpattian born on the shore of the Baltic Sea was still considered to have been born “at home,” not abroad.
This contradiction became the greatest mystery of my childhood. I grew up in Vynohradiv, a town near two borders—the Hungarian and the Romanian. It turned out that a border existed just twenty minutes from my home, but one did not exist 1,200 kilometers away. My child’s mind ...