The speaker talks to an almirah, a wardrobe, as if it were a quiet companion that has kept his life safe. Inside it he imagines a first love letter, a pressed chempaka flower, old silks, and also darker things: smothered dreams and trembling fears. The cupboard becomes a store of everything he has been, the happy and the painful together.
The mood turns sadder as he looks ahead. He pictures a time soon after he is gone, when someone clears everything out, polishes the glass, and fills the shelves with new clothes and new dreams. He says the almirah is "blessed," but the word feels bittersweet, since that fresh life will not include him. The final stanza is a plain prayer. He asks God for a place to rest his tired life, and for someone, anyone, to fill the empty shelves. The poem ends in loneliness, with the cupboard's emptiness standing for his own.