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

Lash Waltz

A feathery kiss brushes my skin. Tingly, in the best possible way. Fleeting, as it melts and trickles to my nose tip. I lift my chin and close my eyes against sunlight that streams from the bluest sky, and I imagine dancers in white, waltzing across my lashes. I smell damp wool as I swipe a mittened hand across my lids, and open them again to a meadow that glints and winks. I lick another flake from my nose and I swear it tastes like . . . childhood. Like snow angels. Like Christmas time. And I want to shout, “Take me back!”

Ann Kathryn Kelly is an editor with Barren Magazine and a columnist with WOW! Women on Writing, and she works in the technology sector. annkkelly.com Twitter and Instagram: @annkkelly

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