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

Throwback

I was rummaging through a box of photographs. I picked out a sepia picture of my late grandparents. In the picture, photographed in Burma, my grandmother is seated on the traditional teak chair in the veranda and my grandfather stands behind her in the shadows thrown by a padauk tree, which is not in the picture. I can tell it was a padauk tree because of the patterns the emerald leaves made on the wall. The magic of old, tucked-away photographs. The celebration of the quiet, unhurried life. I press the picture between the pages of my book and smile.

Swati Moheet Agrawal loves immersing herself in art and literature – there's never a time when she feels more alive.

14 Years Later

Blue Slippers