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Barirah Nazir

September 6, 2026

They say if you apply for an F visa,

your partner cannot come along,

no box available.

L visa? Only if you travel in a group,

as if love needed company.

Three is a crowd, after all.

Any other options? Forget it.

Some things the government hasn’t

invented a form for yet.

At another immigration,

the officer looks at us, asking:

“Have you ever traveled together?"

We say, “We tried.”

Somewhere between Terminal 3 and a yellow paper,

another thousand miles gets added, quietly,

Don’t worry, it is three months or only six years.

You have Wifi and hope.

We become the long-distance almosts

talking through screens,

stacking time zones between us.

Somewhere there’s a form for this, too.

Status: pending.

How long can pending hold?

Barirah Nazir is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Sargodha, Pakistan, and a Gold Medalist in English Literature from Bahauddin Zakariya University. She holds a PhD from Massey University, New Zealand, where her research focused on commodification and nationalism. Her creative work has been published in Pakistani magazines and the Texas Poetry Assignment.