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Today’s prompt: “How you feel about love these days”

When you were a kid, Valentine’s Day involved pink and red construction paper hearts, and glitter. And cards with Snoopy or the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on them. And those candy hearts that tasted like chalk. Love, in general, was icky and put you at risk of cooties. But it definitely lived in the heart.

As you got older, the whole thing about love actually coming from your heart seemed a little silly now that you knew more about its central role in the cardiovascular system. But it still made an intuitive kind of sense, particularly when you felt palpitations around a new crush.

But in this particular moment, as the member of the Order of Dagon twists a knife in your heart, you know love has nothing to do with that now destroyed organ. Why else would your thoughts now rush to your loved ones, thoughts filled with everything you’ve ever felt for them, of your last moments with them, of regret that you won’t have more time with them? No. The heart isn’t where love resides. It just helps keep us around so we can keep loving.