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

Looking Good

I saw it: a child's metal spring horse. My own had been bouncy but this, this was stiff with rust. Brown paint, shine gone, motionless in its gallop through the weeds. I photograph that which is still and silent, slowly decaying, left behind to molder into ghosts. Keepers of those ghosts don't like you on their property—Michel started to say, “Can I help you?” suspiciously, but I knew him from a party where he had said, “You look good,” and now his wife was dead and he was cleaning the yard, and he said to me again, “You look good.”

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

Cost of Fear

Grocery