An Iranian cellist
stands before fire.

Behind him,
a power plant explodes
into the dark sky of Iran.

Sirens tremble.
Smoke ascends like wounded prayer.

Yet his cello continues speaking.

Not against the explosion,
but through it.

The bow moves slowly
across the strings
as though sorrow itself
has learned music.

And my heart begins to resonate
with another cello—

Mahdi al-Sahill
playing Khachaturian’s Andantino in Haret Hreik, Beirut’s southern suburb, Lebanon,
where broken buildings
still remember war,
and windows hold
the memory of shattered mornings.

Ah—

the sound travels farther
than missiles.

Farther than borders.

Farther than empires
teaching children
how to fear one another.

The cello enters the body
like grief entering prayer.

And suddenly
I see Mary
kneeling beneath the Cross.

Not painted in gold.
Not imprisoned in stained glass.

But as a mother
whose heart was pierced open
by the suffering of her child.

Her tears
moved quietly through history
searching for wounded flesh.

Still moving toward wounds.

Still healing from within.

A strange holy word
for love refusing separation.

Breathing on Cello

To move instinctively
toward wounds.

Toward broken cities.
Toward grieving refugees.
Toward bombed hospitals.
Toward exhausted mothers.
Toward lonely souls
sitting silently beneath her breathing.

Like migrating cells
searching for injured tissue.

Perhaps this is holiness:

not escaping the suffering world,
but entering it deeply enough
that another’s pain
begins to heal inside us.

The cello continues.

Iran trembles.
Beirut remembers.
Mary weeps beneath the Cross.

And somewhere tonight
the Body of Christ
still moves quietly through the world—

toward whatever is broken,
toward whatever still longs
for harmony,
for peace,
for love.

-TaeHun Yoon, 5/20/2026