boxed memories

“I was afraid that he would say we never had the time for it, nor would we understand. Does it take a profound education to understand war? Or learn the tension between living and staying alive? I had neither of those tools then, but my greed to know, to grasp in my hand an imagined history of the man in front of me, focused my attention. I knew he had a hole in his heart, my grandfather, but now I wanted to know whether he felt it, and if it was plugged up, this heart, with silence. I felt a murderous desire to have his true heart come flowing out of his mouth, in whatever dialect he pleased, so I could possess courage and war in the same breath.”
-Doreen Lee