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

A Taste of Life

After she wiped off the spots from the kitchen wall tiles, scraped the stains from the counter, vacuumed the breadcrumbs from the floor, extracted the bone from underneath the sofa, loaded the washing machine, collected the poop from the patio, added more items to the shopping list, fed the puppy, to whom she then gave a plastic bottle to chew to keep busy—never mind the noise, nobody is home listening—she licked her favourite candy in ecstasy until interrupted by a notification that her writing piece was rejected, and then by the dog who needed to be walked.

Magda Phili lives in a foggy Italian town surrounded by green with her expat family and German shepherd. She works as a translator.

Grief

Aberration