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 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. 

This Time

Tim Fox

We hear a thump in her bedroom. We’ve been here before. We hop out of bed and race each other to the hall. She’s lying on the floor, half in and half out of her still-darkened bedroom. The cat circles, curious. We are shaking her, slapping her. “What did you do? What did you take?” She gurgles, mumbles. It’s like talking to a newborn. I taste adrenaline. My wife waits for 911 to answer. “What did you take?” “Tylenol.” “How much?” “I dunno. A lot.” When the paramedics arrive, all they can say is, “She’ll probably make it this time.”

Tim Fox is a writer living in St. Louis, Missouri. Because of his personal experiences, he believes in destroying the stigma of mental illness. Substack: The Happy Idiot (tjfstlouis66).

At the Bus Stop