No One Knows

No one knows what happens in the heart.

The heart, like all existence, is a great mystery.

I do not own my heart; if anything, my heart owns me.

My heart will stop beating when it wants to, not when I want it to, unless I shoot myself in the head or get hit by a train or some such rigamorole.

One night in bed many years ago I realized that my heart was not attached to anything like a power generator or a battery. It just beats. And beats. And beats. It has no outside help. From that night on I understood that my heart is as special as the universe. It just is.

I don’t think the heart has anything to do with love,

except that no one knows what happens in love either.

Most hearts beat much longer than most loves, and much more steadily.

Without a heart you die. The same cannot be said for a love.

As I have aged, being loved has become less important than having a heart.

I recently asked a biologist if worms have hearts. They do, she said, but their hearts are shaped differently and their blood is not like our blood.

So what? I thought. A heart is a heart. Blood is blood.

My cat has killed ten mice in the last six days. They have hearts, those mice, and crimson blood.

Tilou is a serial killer with a heart.

No one knows what happens in the heart.