Tiny chips from the damp, rusty bars that keep me locked away flake between my fingers as I squeeze them. Arching my neck, with my head just above the brown and grey rock ledge, I can just make out the dividing line where the rolling ocean has whittled away for millennia the black cliffs that hold up my castle cell.

Perched out to the left, a feeble-looking cypress tree teeters dangerously above its own murky grave, roots embedded with a death grip that challenges the stone: it’s you or me.

As the tide comes in, the sun surrenders behind me, below me, and the tree is lost from sight. Every night I know, I can hear, that those clenched, buried tree roots shout their battle cry against the vicious fury of the sea. And every night I dream that my tree finally succumbs, the way we all must.

For seven years, the only time I’ve smiled was when I’d see the first thin light of dawn make its way into my cell, casting bar shadows above the opposing iron door. Gingerly, I lift my knees and my back, creaking as they too fight erosion. Wrapping my fingers again around those iron retainers, I strain against my weight to lift up high enough to see that my cypress tree still stands.

I’ve memorized its leaves and branches, twisted against the constant and malicious wind. It hasn’t grown an inch since I’ve been here, instead just coiling painfully and slowly in upon itself for protection. I’ve practiced picturing what the stony sea cliff will look like that first morning when I wake to see it gone— inevitably, unmistakably, and irrevocably cast from my life—leaving me with nothing but a couple cold musty blankets and a cell full of my own inevitability.