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

Trespass

House hunting, I spotted the rancher, empty but not posted for sale. I boldly parked the car in the drive. The wide street was quiet. I stepped forth. The redbrick façade with attached, generous garage beckoned. I peeked through a handsome bow window framing a spacious room. I ventured up wooden steps to a deck, peering through glass doors into the den (fieldstone fireplace!) and ample laundry room. I gazed enchanted into hidden woods below. I trotted briskly around the house, noting with approval a garden shed, a private swing, a scarlet maple, blueberry bushes. Reader, I bought that house.

A generalist, eclectic, nondenominational, Alane Balchunas embraces the world at large but is content in her own small patch.

Our First Moment

Cooking and Memory