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

Sweet Sixteen

Our hands melt together walking the dashed yellow line, wondering who is leading who, when I trip up the curb of Lincoln Ave. I squint to see the house where my first home lives, for now. Midnight’s thick summer air is chilled by bright streaks of blue and red lights, dancing through our eyes that are filled with celebratory pills. In synchronicity our heads tilt down. I’m pulling to catch up to the group. Looking back past my crush’s face, I’m stunned by her feral screeching— that he hit her for the last time. Pulled, I count the yellow lines.

Cris Puccia Van Grol is a lifelong creative and kitchen comedian. She performs daily in Rochester, New York, for an obliged audience of three.


Starting School

Koimētērion