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

Touching Her

The only sound I remember was the hiss of the camp stove with the smoke-stained bottom holding the aluminum pot as we waited for water to boil. We poured the hot water into our turquoise plastic camp mugs over Roastaroma tea bags. The tea scent of chicory and darkness didn’t overcome the smells of hardwood forest: leaf litter, rotting log, and some nearby pungent plant. She and I sat barely touching, feeling each other’s warmth, on feather-down sleeping bags over a tarp that rustled with each shift in position. We sipped the warm evening flavors, talking softly or not talking.

Julia Clebsch is a lesbian, feminist writer who focuses on the interaction of humans and nature through non-fiction and fictionalized memoir essays. 

Daylight

Before School