That Last Precious Breath

One early autumn several years ago I worked for a couple of weeks on the Choctaw reservation in Mississippi. My days there changed my life and changed my heart.

I fought to save a young man whom I could not save. Mine were the last eyes he saw. I saw his the last time they looked out upon the world and knew it as the unjust place it is. I hope he saw love there. I hope he saw someone who was giving him everything she had at that moment.

For a while that experience threatened to break me though I am not sure exactly why that loss was so much heavier to carry than the ones that preceded it. Coping meant losing myself in drawing mandalas, and I eventually wrapped my mind around some words that allowed me to express some things that needed to be said.

This poem was originally called “My Choctaw Prayer,” but later I realized that that name might express a disrespect I would never want show, so I have changed it to “That Last Precious Breath.” Somehow, for me, the current title just doesn’t have the same power.

One of the mandalas I got lost in…

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Unless otherwise noted, all material--written, photographic, and artistic--is the original work of Estora Adams. All rights reserved.