The cell, rather than a room, reeks of the stench springing up from the surroundings beyond its confinement through the single meagre square vent serving as an open window with triple iron bars within. The pervading odour is aggravated in the aftermath of a downpour, reinforced by the relentless trickles from any of the crevices that gradually tend to burgeon into a small flood along its western perimeter, stirring the dried dirt clinging to the floor into turbid paste, as if reviving the wounds to their rampant smell that have already dried up. But all of it has no troublesome effect on me anymore, as I am just a short-term visitor here, awaiting the footsteps of my death.

One of its walls, all indifferent colossal grey blanks, bears a shoulder-length oval mirror, worn out, to see my own visage that has steadily corrugated for the past three months—the mirror as if to observe one’s own hell and lament over what has yet to come. But my virtue won’t succumb to the acceptance of what is apparently white like broad daylight as something stark black under the intimidation of self-sacrifice. I peer into the mirror, my figure blurring and shrinking, concealing the scars from the ordeal we have experienced, as the splashed sunlight is steadily ebbing off it. On its misty surface looms the mellow daybreak that gleefully unfurls its ambience all over the azure firmament, along with the birth of my new poem. Those giggles, shrieks of mirth, and dulcet syllables, clustering around me like an oasis, flurry into my misty vision from the mouldy patina of the mirror as if separating me from the defunct dimension, as the direction of truth has in the same way made me drift away from my home.

I bear no remorse, though I excruciatingly yearn for my little son and my beloved wife. I am a poet, after all—a people’s poet in lifelong service for my fellow humans and my Motherland, never stooping to any treacherous deed that would contaminate the moral frame of my nation. I have totally forgotten my pre-issued fateful night until I hear a timely clock strike bang into my ears, followed by the thuds of footfalls approaching my door. Half with fear of losing my dear, and half with the assured consciousness of righteousness, I face the sound to embrace the beauty that ensures my perennial fragrance even after I am gone….

Author: Hein Min Tun, Myanmar