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

To Emulate

The automatic door slid out of the way. The passport office reflected my brain's layers: Chaotic. Perplexing. Questioningly functional. The room was brimming with identities. A monk was rushing to prove, "I exist." Reduced to thumbprints and a signature, we added our names to the roster of the living. I didn't know who I was; I could have been anyone. My mother, a responsible adult, instructed me to remember to renew my new passport. I decided I was more than my existence and set a reminder for 2035. Who knows what my identity will identify as a decade from now?

Anushka S Kulkarni is a young adult who aims to figure out what her zenith is. She enjoys writing about her observations.

First Light