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. 

Liquor Stop

Hannah Shields

I look down the shelves, all the same shade of brown, warm in the sunlight, potentially perilous. I can’t keep focus. I keep breaking up. I choose rye, it seems dignified and things are awfully broken. I wonder if the checkout woman can see that I am awfully broken. I wonder what the love I had would say, watching me play a role I hate. I imagine the bottle breaking. The silence of my life since we broke up. A bell rings as I swing open the door. I got what I was looking for.

Hannah Shields lives in Brooklyn and is a bartender.

The Interview

Out in the Wild