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 and founding reader bobbi lerman; March READERS isabelle B.L, Sara Bednark, Amanda Callais, Ian Li, Nia Mahmud, April Mccloud, Nina Miller, and Clorissa Phillips; and March Editorial intern Kate meen. 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