Read Toni Morrison’s New Short Story for Chipotle

By Jamilah King May 16, 2014

Chipotle doesn’t just want to advertise to its customers, it wants to entertain them. That’s the thinking behind a new plan called "Cultivated Thought" that the company recently announced, which will feature original short stories by prominent authors on its cups and bags. And the names of the authors who’ve signed up may surprise you: Toni Morrison’s participating, and Malcolm Gladwell is, too.

Author Jonathan Safran Foer came up with the idea and pitched it to company CEO Steve Ellis. "I selected the writers, and insofar as there was any editing, I did it," Foer told "Vanity Fair" about the editorial process. "I tried to put together a somewhat eclectic group, in terms of styles. I wanted some that were essayistic, some fiction, some things that were funny, and somewhat thought provoking."

The series also includes work by George Saunders and Michael Lewis.

If you’re not going to be at a Chipotle soon, here’s Morrison’s story:

Two-Minute Seduction
By Toni Morrison

I took my heart out and gave it to a writer made heartless by fame, someone who needed it to pump blood into veins desiccated by the suck and roar of crowds slobbering or poisoning or licking up the red froth they mistake for happiness because happiness looks just like a heart painted on a valentine cup or tattooed on an arm that has never held a victim or comforted a hurt friend. I took it out and the space it left in my chest was sutured tight like the skin of a drum.

As my own pulse failed, I fell along with a soft shower of rain typical in this place.

Lying there, collapsed under trees bordering the mansion of the famous one I saw a butterfly broken by the slam of a single raindrop on its wings fold and flutter as it hit a pool of water still fighting for the lift that is its nature. I closed my eyes expecting to dissolve into stars or lava or a brutal sequoia when the famous writer appeared and leaned down over me. Lifting my head he put his lips on mine and breathed into my mouth one word and then another, and another, words upon words then numbers, then notes. I swallowed it all while my mind filled with language, measure, music, knowledge.

These gifts from the famous writer were so seductive, so all encompassing they seemed to make a heart irrelevant.