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

Leaves

There are too many leaves. Jenna and I wrestle with the wind to get them into bags. Then I crawl into a bed, picking up each individual leaf with pincer-like fingers, because I am driven to. Jenna says, “I came back home from Minnesota because my son was murdered.” I stay under a large fern for a moment, surface and say, “Oh my god, I am so sorry. That is so, so sad.”  I look at her smoking-ruined face and can't imagine the pain she is in. So I don't. There is no room. I go back under the fern.

Jill Pabich lives in Salem, Massachusetts, where she photographs ghosts and then tries to write about them. Instagram, magical realism paintings: @jill_pabich Instagram, ghost photography: @jillpabichphotography


Keepsake

Turn