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

Little Nothings

The couch at my house is big, but you still sit near me anyway. My phone is in my hands, and your sketchbook is in yours. A movie’s on. Something laughably bad, just the way we like it. I don’t say anything. I’m not good at talking for too long. I can make myself, but I don’t like to. I don’t know if you feel the same way, but you don’t seem to mind the stretches in silence between our animated conversations that always dissolve into giggles. Nothing happens. No words are exchanged. I don’t think I’ve ever been happier.

Isha Rajan is an amateur writer attending college in the USA. He’s a big fan of weird writing and likes messing around with points of view. “Little Nothings” is the winner of our FRIENDS AND FRIENDSHIP contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.

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