An Altar for Amaly - Un Suspiro

Amaly Celeste Santos Salazar - May 17,2004 – June 17, 2004

It is a Buddhist belief that it is not the length of time that determines your life but the number of breaths you breathe. Amaly Celeste, my first-born daughter’s life was like one extended breath. Her living outside of my womb was a continuous struggle to breathe and when she finally did breathe on her own, the struggle then was against death. It is the poetry of this breath for which I make an offering of love. It is my own struggle against forgetting, despite time and the natural unfolding of life that threatens to wash her memory away. It is my way of holding her life in my breath, of creating a space for her return.