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

Bittersweet

We clink champagne. The doctor said so. Relief licks my bones. Our infant son will not die. Not like his sister will. I hold him tight, pressing his spine right into my milky breasts. Our daughter lies listening in the living room, unable to turn her head to look at us. The genetic disease she spontaneously inherited hovers over her like a ghost. I stare at her, feeling my heart shift into palpations. The flood of wet joy pauses; I nod to terror. Our fuzzy-haired toddler will not see her brother grow up, but he’ll see her die come spring.

Michaela Evanow is a writer, mother to four, and gardener, living by the sea on Vancouver Island. Find Michaela on Instagram @michaela.evanow.

Tiny Human

Day Begin