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

Toss-Up

I wanted our first date to end at midnight but he didn’t leave until 2. Minutes later, there was a hesitant knock at the door. “You may find this hard to believe,” he said sheepishly. “But my brakes have failed.” “Hm," I murmured, sleepy eyes narrowed. In the moonlight, the puddle under the car could have been a hastily-tossed dirty martini, but I swept suspicion aside. I would regret sending him to his death down the mountain without brakes. I’ll either live or be brutally murdered in my bed, I thought. Instead, I let him in and fell in love.

Jenny Neal is a writer and small business consultant living in the Catskill Mountains of Upstate New York. She is the founder of www.upstatedispatch.com.

Aftershock

River Shadows