First Prize: Zeba Padinjare, Application

Zeba Padinjare

First Prize, 2026 Tower Poetry Competition, 'A Riddle'

Application

In order to be a _______ _______, the applicant requires: 

a.) documents 

b.) to be a person of good standing, 

c.) to stand well in a queue, 

d.) to know 2 people of good standing (who are _______ ________ themselves) 

e.) to not have committed any war crimes, as per the 1949 Geneva Conventions, here or abroad, 

f.) £1500 

g.) to know that money swam to this country, the Company, from the applicant’s years ago and that it may be sensible to be confirmed as having followed 

h.) to not punch a malfunctioning printer when given ample opportunity and reason to do so 

i.) a desire to stop having to complete the suspenseful experience known as a Schengenvisa, for which the following are required: 

    i) chronically camping out on the visa appointments page 

    ii) a minimum of 6 hours 

    iii) the patience of a saint or a migrant 

    iv) documents 

    v) people coordinated at home to send PDFs of documents not previously mentioned as required 

j.) to be: 

    i) at the very least, wishing to live easier in our drawn and quartered world 

    ii) standing halfway up the ladder of existing, with the paperless unperson step below, but without the borderless world populated by paperless people above, and so is on a material level shockingly dependent on A4 and its digital cousins 

A successful applicant who is now a _______ _______, is therefore 

part of the 3% of the world who, 

  upon rotating the globe, gets to stick 

a paperwork pin in, to confirm, 

  part of an even smaller percentage, 

     whose passport morphs strangely 

          from black to blue as though sustaining 

             water damage from transitioning 

          from the coastal nation 

     the applicant has never lived in, 

to the island nation they do.