The Displaced Story

by Tom Busillo

iuliu illes

It was said that you pressed your ear to her cheek. Old men doffed their hats without knowing why. Some remember it as what came after the thunder. Each tooth had its tiny frame. When she smiled, bells rang. When she yawned, wheels spun. When she kissed the air, rubber burned. The town didn’t ask questions. They just learned to look away during mealtimes. Children stopped crying. You could hear a distant street hissing. One spring, a stranger with moss in his beard arrived in a town labeled For Love. He met her under the clock tower. She didn’t speak. She simply opened her mouth and let the bicycles roll out. He wept, quietly and left the next morning without his voice. When the river flooded, it was her mouth that held the bridge together. The children say she did not rust gently.

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Tom Busillo’s (he/his) writing has appeared or is forthcoming in McSweeney’s, PANK, Heavy Feather Review, and elsewhere. He is a Best Small Fictions nominee and the author of the unpublishable 2,646-page conceptual poem “Lists Poem,” composed of 11,111 nested 10-item lists. He lives in Philadelphia, PA.