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

City Snow

It’s city snow. Driving fast, turning orange in the glare of blinking streetlights. Unexpected and exciting. It’s stopped all the buses but not the kebab man, who slides down the path, laughing and cursing as he goes. We laugh over hot chips and then take our greasy fingers to bed, where we leave the curtains open and lie together, silent, close, lost in the shifting veil of white. Places we should be, people we haven’t called slip from our minds as we watch inches accumulate on telegraph wires and chimney pots. Trapped by weather and my growing love for you.

Rachel Canwell lives in Cumbria. She is currently working on her flash collection and a historical novel. Writing keeps her sane. Find Rachel on Twitter and Instagram @bookbound2019.

A Dying Art

Magic