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

Segue

The house was in chaos: a dozen six-year-olds like myself shrieking,  shoving, leaping amongst balloons, paper streamers, and spilled M&M’s. Overwhelmed, the birthday girl—my best friend and neighbor—grabbed and clamped her mouth down on my upper arm. Dots of blood in the shape of her teeth surged through my broken skin. Panicked, her mother sequestered me in the bathroom, bathing and bandaging the wound. “Don’t tell your mother. She won’t let you come here anymore,” she said. I complied. A perfect opportunity for this woman to gauge how safe I was for what her husband did to me next.

Shoshauna Shy devotes her days to the English alphabet—writing nonfiction, flash fiction, short stories, and poetry. She is also a copy editor and proofreader.

Moment of Truth

Beating Moment