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

Unemployment

My computer is whirring, the screen hot to touch. Close your tabs. I hear your voice, a little condescending I think. Those tabs are my future. People whose hands I’m going to shake, places with shitty foyers I’m going to walk into, pompous titles that I am going to claim. Those tabs, I say, are my past. People that didn’t want me in their places. Those tabs, I continue, are my present. The titles I imagine myself to have so I can convince myself to open more tabs. Those tabs are my ambition, in the mildest version of the word.

Surbhi Agarwal (she/her) has a BA in English Literature and has dreams of being a novelist. She currently works as a screenwriter for a production house. Instagram: @surbhiscribbles 

Fifth Birthday

Foreigner