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

Unknown

My phone vibrates. I check to see who it is. It is an unsaved number but I answer, leaning back as the preliminary recording begins. I put the call on speaker, waiting for instruction to press one. My dad has been in jail my entire life. I have no memory of him outside of a prison visiting room. Hey, I say as he spills on about my sister ignoring his calls. I drift off, thinking about what it would have meant to know him. You have one minute left, the recording plays. I look down and four minutes have passed.

Parajai Sanders is a recent grad returning from a one-year hiatus of writer's block. Find Parajai on Instagram @_parajai.

Before School

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