Against the Bombing of Iran: We Have Never Been Without Touch by Maria Prieto

On June 22, 2025 (GMT+3:30) the Trump Administration utilized the United States Air Force and Navy to attack three Iranian nuclear facilities in an operation called "Midnight Hammer". Trump gave a short address after this strike at 10 pm EST (2:00 am GMT). Immediately after the televised statement, Trump posted on Truth Social in all caps saying that "Any retaliation by Iran against the United States of America will be met with force far greater than what was witnessed tonight."

In response to this operation, The Catalyst launched a flash submission campaign against the bombing of Iran and destruction of the SWANA region at large by the United States to begin publishing on July 4th. This deliberately coincided with the day the United States celebrates Independence Day—a federal holiday commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776. The included work in this campaign questions and disrupts the ideology of American Exceptionalism at the expense of Black and Brown lives globally. 

No one is free until all of us are free.

We Have Never Been Without Touch

for you, in Tehran, and for what never can be broken

I loved your eyes,
your sweet intelligence,
your smart tenderness,
the warmth you carried
like a secret
you knew I’d one day need.

I loved the way you listened.
The way you stayed.
The way you touched,
not just skin,
but the parts of me
I hadn’t yet learned
to hold.

Your touch.

You, in Iran.
Me here,
on land untouched by bombs
but scarred by everything
we never said.

The world was already against you.
Then came the planes,
the lies,
the distortions that sell missiles
as mercy.

They say it's about freedom,
but whose?
Not yours.
Not ours.
Not the children, the elders, the angels losing names
to rubble.

And still,
the ache between us,
so human,
so unwise in its precision.
Not knowing what to say,
what to choose,
how to put pain into words
without using them like weapons.

We let silence
become a border.
Our stubbornness
an army.

And I regret it all.
How easily we forgot
to be gentle.
How hard it was
to love ourselves enough
to not make war
on each other.

But listen:
We have never been without touch.
Even in absence,
even now,
your breath is stitched into mine.
Every time I dream,
I find you in the seam
where time forgets to move.

Your touch.

I believe
we are meant
to meet again.
Not as proof
that the world has healed,
but as resistance
against the idea
that love like ours must vanish under bombs.

Our story was not made to burn.
We were made to return.
To each other.
To the softest versions of ourselves.
To the place
where even in ruin,
even in rage,
you touch me,
and I remember
who I am.

“We Have Never Been Without Touch”, in its original formatting, can be viewed below.