Tom Busillo | The Solutions

Dimitri’s nose kept falling off. He’d tried tape and glue, but nothing would hold it. On his way to buy stronger glue, he met Reza, a friend from university, and told him of his immediate problem.

“Oh, that?” said Reza nonchalantly. “That’s an easy fix. Watch!”

He ripped off his glasses, and with them came his nose, which had been ingeniously affixed to their bridge.

“Of course!” said Dimitri. “Brilliant! Reza, you always were the sharpest pencil in the box. I owe you one.”

“Well, I have a conditional date with someone from the Institute tonight, but she won’t go out unless I can find someone for her roommate.”

“I’m your man!”

By the end of the night, he and Sarah, the roommate, found themselves unable to keep their hands off each other.

“Wait,” she said, stopping. ”I want you to take your glasses off.”

“Um…”

“I just want to see what you look like without your glasses.”

“Could we turn the lights off?”

“Oh, we will, but first, I want to see you without your glasses.”

Dimitri thought. Missing noses could be seen on more and more people since the endless wars, the chemical spills, the nuclear meltdowns. Plus, there was a small chance she wouldn’t even notice. The nose barely made up an eighth of the face. Most likely less than 1% of the entire body.

He decided to risk it and ripped his glasses off.

He could still hear her screams as he walked home.

Reza always had been an ass.

He realized this required a solution that would be more permanent. So the next morning, he glued the stems of his glasses to his ears so there’d never be a repeat of that disaster.

But that afternoon, someone threw a stone at him that broke the left lens of his glasses. He couldn’t pry them off of his face, and if he did, he couldn’t afford a new lens anyway. Not wanting to look silly without a lens, his only solution was to wear an eye patch over his glasses.

The following day, the same scoundrel who had broken his left lens threw another stone at him, breaking his right lens. His only solution now seemed to be another eye patch, but that would look silly. So he put clear tape across each eyehole and colored them in with a black magic marker.

Unable to see but unable to afford a proper cane, his only solution was to use an upside-down mop.

The next day, his jaw suddenly fell off as he walked in the park. He got down and looked for it, but to no avail. He could only assume a squirrel had run off with it.

Not wanting to be seen without a jaw, he hurried back to his room, where he thought the matter over at length. The only solution seemed to be to cut off his head. And that is what he did.

And that was the end of Dimitri.

TOM BUSILLO‘s (he/his) work has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, PANK, JAKE, and elsewhere. He is the author of the completely unpublishable 2,646-page conceptual poem “Lists Poem,” composed of 11,111 nested 10-item lists. He lives in Philadelphia, PA. Twitter @tombusillo.