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

Leaving Me

Staring into the cabinet. Not seeing the beans, tomato cans, or expired sauces. Instead, I see her long wheaten hair, now blackened and frayed by too many boxes of dye. I once called it spun gold. She shouted “Nose bungled!” angrily. The word shuffle tickled me, and by repeating it I earned her annoyance. Freckles from the sun, big blue eyes like a Kewpie doll’s. I see her laughing and drawing, always drawing, at the bar in front of the sink where I do dishes. I start to cry, hard, and the beans get wobbly. She is moving out today.

Jill lives with her kids, a bajillion animals, and works as a gardener. She likes to write and take eerie photos. Jill’s eerie photos on Instagram:@jillpabichphotography; Jill’s paintings on Instagram:@jill_pabich

Long-Distance Mourning

Chocolate Chips