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

Forget Not Love

White hair, fine and soft, and bright blue eyes. She doesn't speak, is lost in time. I am taking her pulse, her left wrist only, because her right hand is lightly held by a man. He sits by her side, his eyes on her face. He too has been lost to time but he holds on to his love. She knows no one but him. He sees only her, watches her while undisturbed by the stethoscope on his own chest. My fellow nurse's hands move like falling leaves. Together we examine them, with a brevity of motion, protecting this moment.

Hope Kelpie is a nurse who likes to write, a painter who works in healthcare, a mother who keeps a roof overhead with room for art.

At Dawn

Tethered Corn