© TaeHun Yoon, 2025

If it were me, I’d have opened the door

The task was set centuries ago—
and the earth, like a mother after birth,
now rests in quiet weariness and gentle joy.

She breathes slowly,
not smiling, not soft—
yet wholly sacred.

All land is holy,
even the scorched and broken.
Even the iron-red furnaces gasping for air
where tombs are carved from stone.

Inside these mounds,
the ancestors sleep—
first decayed, then turned to rock.

If you enter the hollow cave,
the city awakens by morning
with blue eyes
and a new, tender feeling.

Whom were you waiting for, O doors?
They shimmer in the gaze of blue-eyed light.

And I—Who
I am human too.

– Author’s Note This poem reflects a moment of reckoning—where the earth, long burdened by history, rests in sacred weariness. It speaks of transformation through decay, of cities awakening with new eyes, and of doors shimmering with expectation. The question at its heart—Whom were you waiting for?—asks us to confront delay, fear, and the human longing to belong. It is a quiet call to open, to rise, and to remember: we are part of the sacred unfolding.