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

Suspended

Backyard, trampoline, large heavy raindrops drip down my face, I spit them off to breathe. The trampoline heavy, soaked, and laboursome. Every jump, the stretched material disburses huge amounts of tiny droplets. Mum appears. “Get off before you get struck by lightning!” “No!” I laugh at her worried face. Bouncing higher and higher, hyena laughter. She is a blur standing in the thick rain. “Get down, get down, get down!” I jump higher. Then, with one foul swoop, the whole sky turns white, the crack so loud it splits the air. Time stopped. Mid-air, mid-flight, my feet weren’t touching anything.

Bec Renton is a writer and poet living in Naarm. Bec has a black cat named Bobby and enjoys the sound of the rain.

Red Light

Alone Together