Aquarium

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It was a fish so ugly it didn’t seem to be a fish at all. A rock made of cold flesh mossy and overgrown, mottled green and white. I hadn’t seen it at first, but then I pressed my face to the glass and tried to get closer. Buried in that impossible growth, the curve downward of thick lips, grimace for a mouth. Small black bead of an eye. Thick tail banded with dark spots. But nothing else recognizable as fish.

He’s an ugly one.

An old man next to me suddenly, his voice an unwelcome surprise. No one ever spoke to me here. Dark rooms, humid and warm, haven from the snow outside.

I guess so, I said.

Those eggs. He’s keeping them all safe.

And then I saw the eggs. I had thought the fish was partially hidden behind a white sea anemone, a clump of rounded soft white orbs, but I could see now there were no stalks, each orb individual, eggs somehow hanging together on the side of this fish.

Three-spot frogfish, the man said. They don’t know why the male keeps the eggs. Could be to keep them safe. Could be to lure other fish near.

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