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

Aberration

My Starbucks is packed. As tranquilizing music plays, everyone is immersed in their digital devices. Glancing up from my iPad, I am grabbed by a startling sight. In a comfortable chair by the fireplace, a young woman is absorbed, reading an actual printed book! Alarmed, I suspect she is a time traveler from the mid-twentieth century. I study her for other telltale signs. There is an engaged energy in her expression, setting her apart from the other dull-eyed customers. She is smiling. I move closer to the exit so I can quickly escape when the time-space continuum rips back open.

Bill Diamond lives in Colorado, where the Rocky Mountains are both an inspiration and a distraction. He writes to try and figure it all out.

A Taste of Life

Cold as Death