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

Visiting Time

I take the long way round. I drive the coast road through my childhood and teenage years. When I reach the spot where I’m the one who makes the decisions, I pull over for a moment. The wind is from the south and the sea is almost green. It has a churned quality to it. The waves roll out; the waves roll in. I count my breaths in time to the water. I can’t go on, but I do. The visiting hours are 2 to 4. I arrive on time. Maybe today will be a day you remember my name.

Fiona McKay lives and writes beside the sea in Dublin, Ireland. Words now or soon in Blinkpot, 50-Word Stories, Sledgehammer Lit, Funny Pearls, the TL;DR Alchemy anthology, Reflex Fiction, and Janus Literary. Find Fiona on Twitter @fionaemckayryan.

End

Aldo Lived