Inside the Heart

My daughter asked me one day “Mom, what is there inside of the heart?”. I spent the next few days trying to answer. I didn’t want to tell her the heart is just a muscle which pumps blood throughout the body. My lips trembled just by imagining her look of disappointment, while hearing this answer. It seemed such an easy answer. To reduce the heart to a muscle, what a bland thing. What about Cupid’s arrows? And Snow White’s heart? And happiness? And love? These things also live inside the heart, don’t they? How can a simple blood-pumping muscle have given rise to so many stories of love, revenge, envy, jealousy, pain, anguish, and desire?

Illustration by Gonçalo Antunes