by Yuko lida Frost

photo by Gabriel Matula on Unsplash

Let me tell you about seaweed. First, it gives us life. The ocean plant absorbs the sun’s radiant energy and carbon dioxide and in turn produces glucose and oxygen. The glucose is the nutrient all living organisms depend on. Ocean plants generate more oxygen than the world’s entire trees combined. They are our lifeline. 

Seaweed is also delicious. Sze Tue wrote in 600 BC that “some algae are a delicacy fit for the most honored guests, even for the King himself.” The record indicates that seaweed has been consumed daily in Japan since the eighth century.  

by Michael Cannistraci

It was 1979 in Los Angeles. I was twenty-two, struggling as an actor, and struggling in general. My dreams of stardom had fizzled after graduation from college; aside from taking expensive acting classes, I wasn’t performing anywhere. 

I got a job going door to door, recruiting men for a government vasectomy study. The work was easy, but the pay was lousy, and I had to buy my own gas. My girlfriend suggested I try bartending to make a living after she observed a bartender in a funky, dive surfer bar in Venice Beach counting a wad of cash on one of our dates.

by Natasha Williams

photo collection of the author 

The kitchen was thick with cigarette smoke and A Love Supreme, his favorite Coltrane. I danced with scarves wrapped around my undersized torso, one tied gypsy-like around my head. Dime-store clip earrings dangled at my neck. I twirled to his lap, where he slumped over his coffee cup at the dining room table, and pulled on his hand to join me. Anchored to his chair by something weightier than our life could contain, he chuckled, looking into his cup, waiting for the “holy” calling only he could hear.

She is me, twenty-two years old, young, younger than I can imagine being from this vantage point. She’s driving a car down a narrow road, wending her way through the New Hampshire woods. That girl is trying to master a stick shift for the first time. She’s not doing too badly, but on inclines, when the gears don’t catch, she finds herself rolling backwards and gets a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach.

My former self is newly married. She blasts the car radio, making pop songs into a soundtrack for her life. Rock me gently.

1. Drink lots of water. Pee constantly.
2. Listen to SZA and Travis Scott’s song “Love Galore.” Dance around your apartment while you sing along to the lyrics. Pretend you are rapping the song for maximum effect.
3. Avoid every bar you visited before and during knowing her. No good comes from the drink overtaking you, especially if she’s there too.
4. Go indoor rock climbing. Scale up a cliff that no one forced you to. You will feel weak, but you carried your entire body weight all the way to the top. Try to get back down slowly.

Editors’ Note: this story depicts emotionally difficult subject matter. Readers sensitive to topics of domestic violence and infant loss are advised before reading.

It was a Friday night after a high school football game the first time I was afraid of Edward. We’d been matched up as board game partners at a mutual friend’s house ten months before, after briefly meeting in church. His eyes were the first thing I noticed about him while we dominated as Password partners. They were a startling electric blue that I imagined fell somewhere between “B” and “V” on the ROYGBIV scale of the color spectrum−more Halls Mentho-Lyptus Drops,