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

Woodland Ambush

I dance on tiptoes over low-lying nettles, emerging into the shimmering glade as coos descend from up in the rustling canopy above. Midges dizzy around me at the speed of light like tiny evening tornadoes, while golden-hour light bounces around the foliage. Something soft, tickly, unseen, lands on the bridge of my nose. I blow a stream of air upwards, and it doesn’t budge. I try to flick it off, but my fingertips just can’t find it. A drifting hair? A wandering bug? No ... this must be a cunning snare laid by an overambitious arachnid. Chuckling, I trundle freely onwards.

Vicki Leigh is a UK-based writer who has also been featured in Globe Soup and Fusilli Flash Fiction. Writing is like exhaling for her, and her Instagram is @vicalicalic.

The Stray

U-Turn