Dear Sir:

     Please accept my deepest apologies for your suffering.
I know that it must have been strange - one moment poised to
kill, the next lying on the floor bleeding.  My fault.  I am
sorry.
     I enclose a story that I hope will bring a moment of
brightness to your cell. 
     An ant was born, and grew, and grew old, and wandered
into a spider's web and died.  And he was reborn, and he grew,
and he grew old, and he wandered into the spider's web again.
And again.  And again.
     It was his sixth life when, for the first time, he 
saw the web before walking in.  He looked at the web, and
up at the sky, and said, "Thank you, God, that I have each
time grown old." 
     He closed his eyes and walked forward, but the web
was gone.
     Ant stories often end that way. 
          -- Hitherby