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

Secret Language

We sat close on the lunch table bench and passed the pencil between us, writing quickly into a notebook, filling two columns with our invented words and their translations. Moshi meant cool, and gumpy meant dumb. I liked best the sound of coralon, which meant beautiful. Of course, what I liked best of all was the nearness of my friend, her safety, her body’s warmth, the knowledge that we shared something inimitable. We made the list for fun. I never feared we’d lose our language; we knew each word by heart. Now, I glimpse her life through screens, say nothing.

Emily Brisse is a writer and English teacher from Minnesota. Her work has been published widely, and she's currently at work on a novel. Find Emily on Twitter and Instagram @emilybrisse.

The Park

Gift