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

Coyote Ridge

A howl near my head. I resist waking, my mind reaching for wisps of dreams. My body answers automatically, a mother’s instinctive response to the plaintive timbre of crying. Upright, I recognize the milky light of pre-dawn. From my window I see the black-tipped brown hairs on its coat, the swoop of its tail. Near my once-wild burros, the coyote yips and croons. I watch, hypnotized. The hens cluck, my horse snorts, guinea fowl raise a racket next door. The coyote bays again, facing the ridge that bears its name, where new houses rise from red dust. Then it disappears.

Claire Unis is a pediatrician and champion of the use of literature and writing in medicine. Her first book, Balance, Pedal, Breathe, was just published. Find Claire at www.claireunis.net and on Instagram and Facebook @literaryartinmedicine. 

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