You get a glass tank. Forty gallons. Nothing else.

No bubbling filter to manufacture calm. No water to obscure the view. Just heat lamp, gravel that reeks of copper and piss, one plastic fern from the Petco on Ventura. $47.99 after tax. Thursday. The same day the Samsung went dark.

Position it dead center where the television lived. Sixty-five inches of 4K nothing replaced with something worse. Your father's text arrives while you're still assembling the lamp: Minimalist phase? Read receipt on. Po...