Last bastion

Dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffledown the cold and darkened highways of the heart.They are the last personality left. They are [the meekwho inherited the heart]meek, what was left of it.

Without food to cook in new or exciting waysnor audience to gasp and cackle, the chefsof the heart quietly waste away while staringdoe-eyed into now-empty Safeway windowschecking under the dusty produce shelvesfor something they pray the rats haven’t found yet.

Years ago, the economy of the heart boomedand there was food everywhere. Producepiled high in pyramids of devotion, meat ingilded glass cases opulent under fluorescence,dairy which ran like the mythical river towardcereals hot and cold. Under it all, thrumminglike great stone wheels on sand under a hot sunnear a river where reeds sang in the windthe heart produced and gave reward for hard labor.

No one knows when it all ended. No one can sayif it was the heart that dried up or the heart’s supply.Either way, food of the heart became scarcer and scarcer.People began dying, not of starvationbut of a certain facial expression that could onlybe described as desperation. Nowall that are left are the celebrity chefs, last bastionof a once mighty empire of the [heartare reduced to husks]heart blown dry by wind.