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

First Solo Circuit

I move the throttle from idle to 2200 rpm. My hammering heart valves are louder than the small plane’s. Turn right at 500 feet. Keep climbing. Keep breathing. Crosswind leg … turn right and the grey, patched tarmac runway is parallel, shimmering in the haze. I surf one wet palm at a time over my knees and complete the downwind checks, flipping pages with shaking hands, turning right onto the base leg. Sandpaper my top lip with a dry tongue. Landing leg … I pull back the yoke. Close the throttle. Stop breathing. The rear wheels lift skin from custard.

Frances Tate got her Private Pilot License at 21 and her first published drabble* decades later. She lives in the UK’s north west and is a technical writer by trade. [*A drabble is a 100-word story.]

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