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Dad comes in from the long dark, oil beneath his fingernails, and eyes ablaze with the memory of burning boats. In one hand he bears the flowers of the forest, in the other a fish from the magnificent sea. The fish has learned to breathe out of water, and to take all circumstances with equanimity, at least until it has gained the rudiments of speech, yet it carries a million implicit questions in the purse of its rubbery lips. It wants to know everything, from why man kills man over scraps of land they’ll never see bear fruit, to why anyone would pair orange wallpaper with green emulsion. As for the former, says Dad, I was born in war and fought in ice and storm, but still I don’t understand. And the latter? Well, it was the 60s. The fish stores this information where it stores the memory of its own father, resting in the depths of an element it barely remembers. Come in, says my mother, hiding the salt and vinegar. What beautiful, beautiful flowers.