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

Smiles

You can’t tell from the photo, but I was completely undone. That girl, she was my first love, the most perfect woman I’d ever met in all of my 21 years. So there I am, pouring my young heart out as best I can, saying how happy she makes me, how I’ve truly fallen for her. And her response: “I really just want to be friends.” Wham. Broken heart. Naturally, the photographer comes by just then. “Smiles,” he says and then the flash. Somehow it came out great. I’m smiling, looking happy. I could have been an actor, for sure.

Ian Owens is an actor/writer living in Essex, Massachusetts. He watches birds, rehearses lines, and collects swords. Riding the Big One is his first book. Ian is a Five Minutes Founding Contributor.

Salsa Lessons

Stranger/Angel