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

At Dawn

“Make love to me.” Leave her. Stay for me. Not the children. Me. Break bread with me. Broken woman. Break me, bring your body down on mine, break it, break me in this bed. Love me, broken me, the me you broke. Broken horses are the only horses we allow our daughter to ride. We taught our children to be careful. We taught them to care for things they want to last. Make this marriage last. Care for me. Here, in this bed, unbreak the sacrament. Care. He turned, and walked away. Broken promises. Broken marriage. Broken children. Broken life.

Megan Reilley is an emerging writer whose work explores the expectations of female identity, mothering, female bodies, and the bodies of our children. Find Megan on Twitter @lifeoreilley5.

My Own Advice

Forget Not Love