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

Teen Crush

He was always holding her hand and stealing kisses by her locker. I barely spoke to him; I imagined that he barely knew who I was. Then, on our last day of high school, he wrote a funny and surprising goodbye message in my diary. Some of it said: “My only dream come true, I won’t survive without your gleaming eyes. I suppose you’ll have your hands full trying to fight off all those guys. Lots of love from Marc xxxxxxxxxx.” I never saw him after that. He was 24 when he rode his motorcycle for the very last time.

Mara Blazic lives in Australia. Some of her non-fiction and fiction has been published in Five Minutes, Bath Short Story Award Anthology, and Mamamia.

Protection

Hurricane