Five Minutes explores five minutes of a life in one hundred words. Five minutes is edited by Susanna Baird, with editorial support from managing editor Maria s. picone, newsletter editor kate meen, and founding reader bobbi lerman, plus our rotating team of guest readers, who you can meet in the latest newsletteR. Five Minutes was founded in October 2020, with the Salem (Mass.)-based writing group Carrot Cake Writers supplying the journal’s first pieces. We’d love to read your five. Submit here

7:55 A.M.

Five minutes until my first Teams meeting. I'm still in pajamas but you are showered and ready for an appointment. You grab your car keys and step out while I stand in the doorway, waiting, watching as the garage door rolls down, the rectangle of light diminishing, then expanding again. Perhaps you remembered. The hug, the peck on the cheek: our ritual when you/we used to leave for work. You rush in — “I forgot” — grab your coffee mug from the kitchen, and out again. I log in on my computer and say a cheery “Good Morning” to others like me.

Sara Siddiqui Chansarkar is an Indian American writer. She is the author of Morsels of Purple, a flash collection, and Skin Over Milk, a chapbook. Find Sara at saraspunyfingers.com and on Twitter @PunyFingers.

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