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

Sonic Boom

Bzzz—the sound of the drone flies over the Beirut skies. A little too close for comfort, it is above my bedroom now. It follows me to the kitchen and then the bathroom. I can't help but feel I need to poop and fart silently in case “they” can hear me. On Reddit, this noise was dubbed Lebanon's mosquito. But I have comfort knowing it's not the sonic boom. The first time I heard the sound barrier break I screeched: Was that thunder? A bomb? The windows shook. I survived. Now I listen and smile knowing: It's not a bomb.

Christine Khuri is a publications coordinator by day and Scrabble player by night. Despite studying migration, Christine never expected to live what they read about. But that's life.

Polarities

73 Cents