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; May READERS Darcy alsop, PRERNA BAROOAH, AMITA BASU, Sarina Caragan, Antony Püttschneider, and Elisa Rivera; and May Editorial intern sienna lew. 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

Dolce Far Niente

I haven’t written a single poem in months. I’ve lived humbly, reading Kahlo, Sartre and Beauvoir, pondering the power of resilience and the nature of relationships. I stroll along the Sabarmati Riverfront Promenade, a picturesque two-level walkway dotted with impeccably manicured trees and shrubs. I drool over weeping figs with arching branches, blackboard trees in full bloom, trumpet-shaped yellow elderflowers and clusters of Chinese Ixora. I rest my weary eyes upon the waning sun, and suddenly I’m seized with a strong, irresistible urge to embrace the unfolding moment as though it were the first green blade after a tedious winter.

Swati Moheet Agrawal is a poet and writer based in Mumbai, India. Her work has appeared in The Alipore Post and Celestite Poetry. [Ed. note: “Sweet doing nothing” in Italian, dolce far niente is the joy of idleness.]

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