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

God Hates Me

CW: Sexual Abuse. I end the Viber call after my psychiatrist diagnoses me with anxiety disorder, before hopping inside the shower, where I let the water drain everything that’s left of me. Just outside the bathroom are voices, my siblings’ shrill reverberating despite pitter-patter of water on my feet, my cousins banging on the door telling me to open it, and my mother shouting that my grandfather is dead, years after he first touched me and I prayed for God to take him anywhere but here. It’s been eleven years since that happened, and only now am I reaping the prayers I’ve sown.

Isaiah Duey is wading through a vast ocean of worries and writes along the way. She's a practicing agnostic.

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