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

Helpless

I wake up early. Stomach churns. Panic. A gust of terror that has no language to support it. Eyes burning without tears. Thoughts dart, searching for a solution. I enter your room and say I changed my mind. I’m not ready to go to Camp Kalmia for two weeks. “Do I have to go?” I ask. I must go. It’s already paid for. Question answered. A few sentences of pleading. “Please may I stay home?” I ask. I must go. Helplessness, void of color. I get dressed in the regulation Girl Scout shorts. A white shirt. Itchy. I’m in uniform.

Rachel Newcombe is a psychoanalyst, teacher, and supervisor on Orcas Island and in Seattle, Washington. She co-leads a creative nonfiction writing collective for therapists. Find Rachel on Twitter and Instagram @rachelnewcombe8.

Roundabout Rage

Flying