Running Out of Time

Time stamps my body like an entry visa, each seal another countdown. In the shifting tides of a new administration, policy becomes weather: sudden, merciless, always above me. I move through airports like hourglasses, my presence measured in grains of legality and uncertainty. My passport carries more questions than answers, organizing my life not by seasons but by expiration dates. Overstay one, and risk unraveling everything.

This fragility is not mine alone. International friends confide in me the same dimmed existence, lives arranged around renewal cycles, milestones missed because paperwork ruled the calendar. While classmates book trips with ease, we collect biometrics appointments, consulate visits, and “additional processing.” Entire geopolitical histories crystallize into a single moment at a border, where a passport’s color becomes a proxy for trust.

I’ve spent months shuttling between consulates in Boston and New York just to participate in the summer programs others enter freely. I imagine a world with a global citizen pass, mobility unshackled from birthplace, travel without justifying one’s humanity.

For now, I comply with lists and bullet points, an annual ritual etched into my sense of self. I am a student, a human being, yet beside those with stronger passports, I feel the quiet hierarchy of who is allowed to move, and who must continually prove.

Now, as graduation looms, the clock’s hands tighten. The visa’s ink begins to fade, and I am left wondering: stay and live with the fragility of permission, or leave and begin again on another timeline?
Somewhere between arrival and departure, I exist, stamped, scanned, and waiting to be renewed.