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

Black on Grey

I’m bereft at the grief-grey stripe, the immensity of black, how much further I’d have to fall to feel an absence so deep. There’s a young man in a suit observing the painting, motionless, in silence. I sit next to him, too close; as if we were lovers, wanting to spread my fingers over his, tell him how sad I am, how devastated by loss, but I sense he already knows. We are the same static in our fabric; we crackle in parting. He walks towards the slim light of the exit, leaving me as lonely as I’ve ever been.

Julia Ruth Smith is a teacher, mother, and writer of small things. She lives by the sea in Italy. Her poetry and prose can be found in numerous online and print journals. Find Julia on Twitter @JuliaRuthSmith1.

Trust

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