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

Aftershock

Three drunk teenagers play tag in the park. Under the ink-blue sky with the usual constellations, I race to touch a tree staked to the ground and run right into one of the taut and unyielding wires. I feel stunned. We three laugh, breaking the moment. The next day, a deep red line diagonally dissects my arm, torso, and leg, and it radiates into both halves of me. Since being raped at five, I had felt nothing. So that morning it was a surprise to finally see all the colors of bruise and feel all the shades of pain.

Rina Palumbo is working on two nonfiction long-form writing projects alongside short-form fiction and creative nonfiction. Words in Stonecoast Review, Milk Candy Review, Autofocus, et al. Check out her Twitter @Rina_Palumbo and her website www.rinapalumbowriter.com.

Sicilian Soup

Toss-Up