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

Gift

A stray follows the man who picks plastic from the beach every morning. I notice it's not looking at him, merely tracing the footmarks he leaves, like it knows them, shaped into eight, blurring away towards the tiny toe. They stop and start, a pattern like a question, sometimes answered, often not. The man stoops where tiny red crabs are rearing heads, cowering back, like a children's game. He picks a shell, two, then more, like the ones girls thread together to wear around their necks, then puts them in his breast pocket remembering something. I imagine a daughter, waiting.

Mandira Pattnaik is a writer, editor and columnist. She loves the sea and beach walks. More at mandirapattnaik.com.

Secret Language

Re-Entry