dimly remembered celebrity chefs shuffle down the cold and darkened highways of the heart they are the last personality left they are the meek who inherited the heart what was left of it without food to cook in new or exciting ways nor audience to gasp and cackle the chefs of the heart quietly waste away while staring doe-eyed into now-empty safeway windows checking under the dusty produce shelves for something they pray the rats haven't found yet years ago the economy of the heart boomed and there was food everywhere produce piled high in pyramids of devotion meat in gilded glass cases opulent under fluorescence dairy which ran like the mythical river toward cereals hot and cold under it all thrumming like great stone wheels on sand under a hot sun near a river where reeds sang in the wind the heart produced and gave reward for hard labor no one knows when it all ended no one can say if 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 starvation but of a certain facial expression that could only be described as desperation now all that are left are the celebrity chefs last bastion of a once mighty empire of the heart are reduced to husks blown dry by wind