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

Role Reversal

You are the pepper shaker and I am a napkin. We meet before our entrances to “Be Our Guest.” Backstage, it glows red. You hold my hand. I wonder if you will be my boyfriend. You rub your thumb over mine and I see it: the homecoming dance, ice cream after school, you leaning against my locker. We hear our cues. After the number, I find you in the bright light of the cafeteria. We trade places. With my eyes and nervous smile, I shake my feelings down around you. But you turn. Like a napkin, you brush me off.

Kaia Preus is a writer in Minneapolis. Her first book, The War Requiem, was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award. Learn more at kaiapreus.com.

Misspelling

Quarantine D&D