What Shape is His Heart?

"Look what I made for you!"

A little six-year-old girl could not be any prouder as she showed a slightly older boy her sketched masterpiece, the first of many she would learn to draw in the near future.
It was a childish picture, crudely drawn by six-year-old fingers whose fine motor skills had yet to develop. It depicted a boy and a girl holding hands under a big tree (is that a dog barking at the background?) looking up at a rainbow that decorated the blue sky.

The girl was all smiles with a huge pink flower on her head; the boy had a big red heart on his chest, smiling just as widely.

"That isn't the shape of my heart!"

Little brows frowned in confusion as the slightly older boy turned and walked away, hands in his pocket, mumbling about things she wasn't able to hear.

Her eyes scanned the picture again, trying to see if she had the heart drawn wrong.

It wasn't. It looked just how a heart should look like, how a heart is usually depicted in almost everything, from her favorite hairclip to her mother's apron.

If this wasn't the shape of his heart, then what is?

Maybe his heart is a circle, she told her now seven-year-old self as she watched a certain ten-year-old boy running after a soccer ball. He had the cutest reaction when the ball he kicked went cleanly into the goal, like he could not believe it himself.

Cheers erupted from everyone, except for a girl who was busy sketching a boy with a bright red circle on his chest, holding out a gleaming gold trophy to a group of equally happy boys.

Maybe his heart is like the one in our science book, oddly-shaped and covered with thin wiggly lines, pondered her ten-year-old self as she proceeded to complete her drawing of the circulatory system.

She had been quite taken aback to learn from her science teacher that the heart is not at all shaped like her favorite hairclip, and that it is as big as its owner's fist. She was beside herself with worry, because if the heart was really that small, then it may not be able to hold a lot of things.

She worried she might not fit in his.

She did not submit her sketch to her teacher the next day, instead she handed it to a thirteen-year-old guy who glanced at it once and said,

"No, that isn't my heart."

Okay, so her teacher had been wrong. Not everyone had that odd-looking heart in their book. She started another sketch.

Maybe his heart is a star, she mused as other twelve-year-old girls around her giggled and fawned over a certain group of fifteen-year-old guys performing onstage. She had drowned out all the screaming and the drums and the guitars and even the lyrics, focusing on the boy behind the keyboards.

He smiled at everyone in the audience and moved his head in time with the music, and he practically shone in her eyes, emitting a soft glow like the stars she looked up to from her bedroom window every night.

She pulled out her sketchpad and started drawing a guy playing the keyboard, the star on his chest glowing as radiantly as his smile.

Maybe his heart is a cylinder, she thought as she clapped along with the audience, watching a very charming eighteen-year-old boy who just climbed up the stage to receive his diploma. She clapped loudly five times more, one for every award he was given.

Her fifteen-year-old self was beaming as she sketched his proud look the moment she got home. It didn't matter if the boy in the drawing had an odd cylinder by the chest.