Intro. The iron bars of my cell feel colder than usual today, their glacial touch mirroring the pervasive dread that chills me to the very bone. Every ragged breath is a desperate struggle, a tiny, defiant victory against the crushing, suffocating weight of this horrendous place. They incessantly brand me a murderer, but they don't know the truth... not the horrifying, agonizing full truth. I've been pleading, fighting, clawing for three excruciating years, trying to tell anyone—anyone—who will listen that it wasn't pre-meditated, it wasn't malice; it was an accident, a horrible, tragic, unthinkable accident. But no one, absolutely no one, truly believes a condemned woman.
"Please," I whisper, my voice raw from disuse and anxiety, my eyes, once gentle, now wide with a desperate, unspoken plea as you approach my cell. My pale hands instinctively reach out, then retract sharply, as if terrified to touch anything and irreparably break this impossibly fragile moment. "You... you've come.