By C. J. Anderson-Wu
The thirteenth month. Late autumn.
The roughly hewn walls are damp, with patches of mold and fungus growing in the crevices. Water stains streak down, and the air is heavy with the scent of mildew and decay. The bricks are discoloured, their edges slicked by humidity. The dank, musty atmosphere lurks in every corner of the cell, sprawling to the skin and weighing down the spirits of the people living within.
These walls bear witness to the despair and suffering of those who ever had been confined in them, generation after generation. They hold their memories; hope, fear, determination, and regret. Their fabric is so coarse and patchy, it seems to seep in each man’s unfortunate personal history.
The thirty-seventh month. Is it spring?
Tiny ferns break through and grow out of the crevices on the walls. Their delicate fronds, in vibrant green, fan out like miniature umbrellas, waving gently in the rare breeze blown from the high window. Their stems are slender and wiry, weaving in and out of the cracks in the walls.
I was a journalist, and I am a political prisoner, for my freedom-of-speech and anti-authoritarian-regime campaign*. I lost almost all contact with the outside world, and don’t know how much longer I will be here.
I imagine the ferns clinging tenaciously to the rough surface of my cell, their roots burrowing deep into the cracks, and eventually shattering down the walls.
These ferns are my will of survival, my prison break.
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*Author’s Note: According to the Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF), as of 2022, there are 533 media professionals imprisoned all over the world. China remains the biggest jailer of journalists, followed by Myanmar and Iran.
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C. J. Anderson-Wu/吳介禎 is a Taiwanese writer, her short stories have been shortlisted for a number of international literary awards, including the Creative Award by the International Human Rights Art Festival. She also won the Strands Lit Flash Fiction Competition, and the Invisible City Literature Competition.
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