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

Trees Talking

Normally, the loggers arrived and left while I was at work; I didn’t see or hear the job of killing trees. Today was different. I refused to look around me, didn’t want to see, but the piles of roadside logs couldn’t be ignored. I found treetops strewn, the ground muddy. It wasn’t long before I felt lost. There were pyramids of them amid grapples, saws, and long-armed trucks, sawdust bleeding everywhere. Then I saw it: one log’s cut-end had a heart-shaped knot at its core, and it broke me. I’ve always talked to trees, but now they spoke to me.

Julene Waffle is a mother of three boys, a teacher, entrepreneur, and writer. She loves her family, her dogs, writing, and nature, in that order. Find her at www.wafflepoetry.com and on Twitter and Instagram @julenewaffle.

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