“To understand all is to forgive all,”
he says, from the rocking chair he’s more than earned.

In response, I internally roll my eyes—
though outwardly, I’m polite.

Because I’m a philosophy major.
And I’m twenty.
So, I know everything.

But then I remember:
when he was eighteen,
a freshman at Harvard,
he dropped out of college to fight Hitler.

He was shot down over France.
His life saved by German soldiers—
not quite Nazis,
just men on the wrong side of a divided line,
still doing their duty for the burning enemy before them.

Shipped back to America,
he survived nearly a year of surgery.
At the end, adorned with a Purple Heart,
a weak apology for the dent in his forehead.

Barely anything left of his ears
Just a bit of cartilage remains,
to hug the holes.

“To understand all is to forgive all,”
he repeats with soft authority.

Hitler is the reason children gawk at him.
If he needs to forgive Hitler—
then who the fuck are you, at twenty,
to spit on his forgiveness?

I tell my uncle I hear his point,
even as I disagree.

He’s a lawyer and a soldier.
A hero in practice and on paper
he wouldn’t want me to lie.