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

Short Walk Home

Gerry walked me home, though my apartment was a two-minute walk from theirs; it was three in the morning and we’d been drinking. He climbed the four flights of stairs and sat down so scary pale that I asked what’s up and he said I am in love with you and don’t know what to do. I clasped his hoary face in my hands and kissed it and he kissed me back and I sat on his lap and we kissed and kissed while the phone rang and rang, his wife on my machine mumbling where the bugger are you?

Michele Markarian is a playwright and short fiction writer. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with her husband, son, and prehensile-tailed skink. Facebook: Michele Markarian Twitter: @MicheleMarkaria

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