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

Night Owl

It’s midnight, and the world is sleeping and silent. Her thoughts are wide awake, talking a mile a minute. Her room is dim; there’s a light on inside her heart. Her eyes, heavy with fatigue, tell her it’s time for bed, but Inspiration becomes her caffeine, her alarm clock telling her it’s time to write. Tappity tap tap goes her laptop as she writes what she sees in her mind. Beginning, middle, end. A movie in her thoughts, sudden and quick. A blessing of imagination; a curse of no sleep. The writer enters a world of her own. She’s alive.

Kelly Esparza is a sleep-deprived author who strives to uplift others with her writing. Her work has appeared in 433 Magazine, Dwelling Literary, and elsewhere. Find Kelly online at kellyesparza.wordpress.com and on Twitter @Kelly_Esparza7.

Fight or Flight

The Cigar