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

Recharged

My four-year-old daughter flits around the bedroom, darting, and I’m panicked she will collide with a sharp corner. I was not prepared for this child, a burst of movement and thoughts. She arcs towards the window, questions rising out of her mouth: “Mommy, how do birds sit on eggs without cracking them? What if people only had one lip? Why do we have boogers?” I have no answers, only questions of how to be her mother. She flutters and flurries. I wince, envisioning a crash. She comes to me, hovering, landing for a squeezed hug, recharged, before taking off again.

Lina Lau is a green tea drinker and writer in Toronto, Canada. She writes during the between moments of parenthood. Instagram: @_linalau_ X: @LinaLau_

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My Rhyme Crime