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

Scene

There are scenes from life that imprint on your mind permanently. You could not yet know, but somehow did know, the significance of that moment in your history, the moment that changes everything. Here is mine: Backlit by a streetlamp, a Texas boy topped by a dandy's leather hat navigates an icy corner in cowboy boots. Neon is everywhere at the edges of my vision, but in the center, he is akimbo and near losing balance, his eyes hidden by the hat's brim, but his smile visible beneath. I wait. He is coming to meet me. He smiles for me.

Mary Ann Honaker is the author of Whichever Way the Moon, forthcoming from Main Street Rag. She currently lives in Beaver, West Virginia. maryannhonaker.wordpress.com/

The Crow

A Great Mom