My man Cyril is locked up for loving and then unloving (his fists were involved) another woman. I send him gift boxes to help unload my anger. I write his name in red Sharpie: Cyril Sit-Your-Ass-in-Prison Williams. Underneath, I write the address of the Alexander Correctional Institution, Taylorsville, North Carolina, in big loopy letters that suggest wide open spaces; I mean, a car could drive through my o’s. On the back of the box, I draw the sun like a kid would, a yellow circle with triangular rays around it. According to Cyril, who calls me collect once a week from the prison phone, the sun barely finds the tiny window in his cell. According to Cyril, my drawing is so bad that my sun looks more like a cog in a machine. “That’s me, alright,” he says. “Turning the wheels of justice.”

Every week, I tell Cyril that, concerning what’s inside the gift boxes, I’m open to requests. “Now, baby,” he says first, “you just fold your pretty little self into one and finally get up here to see me. Clothing optional.” Then, that unmagical sweet talk over, he’ll request something practical, something possible:

He requests cookies and cigarettes: I send one stale Oreo and a pamphlet on lung cancer.

He requests dental floss and a truck magazine: I send a piece of white thread I pulled from his favorite sweatshirt and a Tonka Toy catalog from 1989. 

He requests the name of a good lawyer: I send a flea-market gavel.

He requests my forgiveness: I send a Don’t Mess With Texas bumper sticker, though I have never been, and don’t see any need to go, to Texas. 

Then three Wednesdays pass, and no phone calls from Cyril. No requests: no gift boxes. I draw bad suns on receipts at the cleaners where I work, drag my anger around like a fat tail, and miss Cyril, which is like missing a fat tail made of rage. I start thinking about minutes to hours to days to weeks to months to forever, and realize that everything has a color but time. I think about hunger, one kind stacked mean on other kinds. I think about concrete and a mattress hard as a fist. 

When Cyril finally calls, his voice sounds like someone’s pinching it. He wants to know if there’s such a thing as a prison tree. “A guy in here says it’s in Australia. It’s hollow and was used for lock-up. Or maybe it’s not real, just a myth. I need to know it’s just a myth.”

What I’ve been thinking, Cyril’s been living.

I don’t look it up. I put my phone down, Cyril still talking about how he needs to know. I find a box and cut a hole in the top so that the sapling I take him will have room to grow. Forget the practical, the possible—if forgiveness is magic, that tree will tower above everything, from the prison all the way to Texas.