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

Cooking and Memory

I promised Jack that we would make a pudding from my childhood but now, I regret it. I never had milk-and-honey moments as a child. Cooking with my mother was rare. Quality and quantity, essential growing-up ingredients, were missing. I have a Proust’s madeleine moment but it’s not sweet. To cook blancmange now means to grieve what was not there. I stand still, looking at the stainless steel, the wooden spoon, and white powders. I break my promise to Jack. We put on our coats and head to the new coffee shop in town. I hear they make divine desserts.

Isabelle B.L has published a novel. Her work can be found in Visual Verse, Ample Remains, Kitchen Sink Magazine, and elsewhere. 

Trespass

Initiations