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

The Arrival

My loving, difficult sister offered to come the weekend before my first child’s birth. But I’d promised my husband—never her fan—we’d have those last, free days alone before everything changed. “I understand,” she said. Early Sunday morning, two voices outside our bedroom window sang “si en tu ventana llega una paloma,” waking us: My sister and young niece had Amtrak-ed overnight as a surprise. “Don’t let them in!” my partner begged. I rose; riven, I opened the street door. On the sidewalk, they grinned and danced, suitcases gift-stuffed. I cried out, “You can’t come in.” Then everything changed.

Alabama born and raised, Leslie Cohen is a former lawyer, union organizer, and teacher, and a current editor.

Mother Drives

Without Words