#MicroMemoir
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laurabesley.bsky.social
'We discover a key in our deceased mother's dresser drawer...'

Fantastic #micromemoir by @lizdebeerwriter.bsky.social @fiveminutelit.bsky.social

#writingcommunity
fiveminutelit.bsky.social Five Minutes @fiveminutelit.bsky.social · 12d
"Who Knows?" by Liz deBeer, whose work has appeared in Fictive Dream, Bull, Brevity Blog, and other journals. Her debut chapbook Farewell to Emptiness is available from @thirtywestph.com
September 22, 2026 at 12:35 PM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
“Don’t forget the survey! I’ll get bragging rights, and free pizza, and they’ll make me king!!” 🤴

Sweet sassy molassey. 💀😂🧵

#DailyDelights #MicroMemoir
ALT TEXT FOR FULL THREAD Okay, so I just stopped by my favorite dispensary, and they had a new employee who was training, mostly taking care of the customer himself while the trainer worked at the register beside him. The trainee was a lanky young man, incredibly social and very energetic. I know the trainer. He’s a nice guy, but the level of energy he was working around was clearly draining him and wearing on his patience. The trainee was HYPED, talking so loudly that I couldn’t hear when the woman on his other side was trying to signal for me to come over. She was also extremely soft-spoken. He’d been wearing on her, too. The huge room was consumed by the conversation between the trainee and his customer. “I’M SO FUCKING STOKED FOR YOU TO TRY THIS, DAWG. You have no fucking idea, man. Last week, I smoked this with some friends, and I…” And it went on, and on, and on, with all sorts of vulgarities. I thought it was hilarious, but I felt for the other employees, who were clearly over it. He finished the transaction with, “Don’t forget the survey! I’ll get bragging rights, and free pizza, and they’ll make me king!! HAHA!” 💀👑 After the customer left and the line was cleared, the trainer walked over to him: “Okay. I love your enthusiasm. You were clearly vibing with that customer. We love that. But we are going to need you to watch your language and mind what you’re saying and how loud, buddy. Your customer was cool. It seemed fine. But not every customer in the room is always down like that, so… you feel me?” Trainer deserves to be king for the day, imo. 😂
September 20, 2026 at 9:02 PM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
Sometimes miracles are about proof, not permanence. ✨

#ThoughtJournal #MicroMemoir
September 20, 2026 at 6:10 PM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
Once upon a time, teenage me was at a pet store when a five- or six-year-old pressed his face against a cage and excitedly asked his mom what the floofy creature was.

“It’s a chinchilla,” she said.

“OOOOOOO, CHURRILLA!!” he growled.

They’ve been churrillas to me ever since. 😂

#MicroMemoir
September 19, 2026 at 8:04 PM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
Here’s a fragment from a personal essay I just finished drafting—and then I saw this meme.

I currently have no idea where this piece belongs within my body of work, so it will likely end up forgotten and rotting in my Notes app.

I’ll allow it to peek out at the world first. 😂

#MicroMemoir
ALT TEXT FOR BOTH IMAGES: I’m at a place in my life where I don’t feel like I’ve had a meaningful, nourishing, satisfying conversation with another adult in about two years. And I can no longer pretend that certain relationships, conversations, and things work for me. I’ve arrived at a kind of irreversible knowing of what my standards are for connection, and it has left me completely incompatible with the world I knew before. That’s been very complicated emotionally. I’ve never gone through such a long stretch without reaching for anyone or allowing myself to be reached (except for the children, of course). And honestly, I don’t think I ever believed I could survive it. Not because, in hindsight, I ever particularly enjoyed the company I kept, but because I guess I believed I would basically fall off the edge of the Earth. It certainly felt like I was.
September 12, 2026 at 3:12 AM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
#MicroMemoir
Okay, so I love this bag. And also, it reminds me of the time when I was eight or nine and my brother and I followed a call for help out into the woods and found that my grandfather had crashed his four-wheeler… and his eyeball was dangling out of his face. My brother ran back to the house to get help, and I stayed there with him. He was in shock and confused. He looked up at me and kept saying that he couldn’t find his glasses. I was like, “Bruh, I do not think that matters right now…” 😅😂
September 11, 2026 at 12:06 PM
lavanasil.bsky.social
Giornata in piscina, nella campagna del basso campidano, ai piedi del Monte Zara. Tralasciando le solite vespe, ho visto diverse libellule rosse, un falchetto in volo predatorio, una piccola mantide religiosa e una farfalla macaone. Confesso: mi si è acceso un ingenuo moto di speranza.

#micromemoir
September 6, 2026 at 2:05 PM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
"Early Optimism" by M. Atchleross, a Richmond, Virginia, writer, photographer, and appreciator of well-preserved mid-century modern homes."Early Optimism" is the Editor's Pick for our WISH contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 30, 2026 at 5:15 PM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
"The Storm" by Megan Neary, a writer and teacher living in Fort Collins, Colorado. "The Storm" is the Editor's Pick for our PRAISE RAIN contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 28, 2026 at 7:15 PM
lavanasil.bsky.social
… la mia paura di cominciare a scrivere davvero la stia tirando ancor più alle lunghe. Scrittori in lettura, capita a tutti i principianti o devo farne argomento nella mia prossima seduta di psicoterapia? #amwriting #micromemoir #writingcommunity
August 28, 2026 at 3:05 PM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
—"Last Stop" by John Holmes, who cycles around the North of England often bumping into forgotten memories. "Last Stop" is the Editor's Pick for our INTERSECTIONS contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.

August 27, 2026 at 6:15 PM
lilyluz.bsky.social
It's such an honor to be chosen as the Editor's Pick for the CARE category of Five Minutes' Micromemoir Marathon!

Two pieces published in one week feels like a dream 🤍✨
fiveminutelit.bsky.social Five Minutes @fiveminutelit.bsky.social · Aug 26
"She Means Well" by @lilyluz.bsky.social (they/she), who loves writing romance, fantasy, and horror. Lily is currently drafting a traumantasy novel featuring queer and neurodivergent leads. "She Means Well" is the Editor's Pick for our CARE contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 26, 2026 at 5:58 PM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
"She Means Well" by @lilyluz.bsky.social (they/she), who loves writing romance, fantasy, and horror. Lily is currently drafting a traumantasy novel featuring queer and neurodivergent leads. "She Means Well" is the Editor's Pick for our CARE contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 26, 2026 at 5:15 PM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
#MicroMemoir 🤷‍♀️😆
Anyway, I’m thinking about the time I went to Dollywood with my family as a teenager, and the underwire in my bra snapped. It was the first time it had happened. I was panicked because it hurt. I wanted to take it off, but I didn’t want to go without a bra because I was very developed and wearing a tank top. And my parents were like, “To be fair, Dollywood is a great place to be proud of one’s boobs. So.” 💀
August 26, 2026 at 1:09 AM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
"Banana Bread" by Barbara Matteau. A recent MFA in Creative Writing graduate, Barbara is working on a collection of short stories that feature Salem, Massachusetts. "Banana Bread" is the Editor's Pick for our RIPE contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 25, 2026 at 5:15 PM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
⚠️ CW: Suicide ⚠️

#MicroMemoir #ThoughtJournal
#MeaningMaking #Psychology #HumanCondition #Philosophy

🧵
ALT TEXT FOR WHOLE THREAD: When I was six years old, I watched a man die by suicide. I wouldn’t say I was traumatized by witnessing it, because it didn’t scare me. What I remember was an epiphany: “Oh! There is a way out of this.” I was relieved to have been shown an exit strategy. Suicide became an appealing backup plan for however dark things might get, which also meant, strangely, that it sometimes helped me be bolder. “Well, if this doesn’t work, I could just kill myself.” It was a joke, and joking helped diffuse the pressure of whatever I was doing. But the joke worked partly because, underneath it, I genuinely believed the option existed. There was something about knowing I could leave that made it easier to stay. I used to think that was probably pretty fucked up. Over the last couple of years, though, I’ve become more curious about the function that belief served for me. Because I allowed the thought to exist, I didn’t have to fight myself over having it. And I wonder if that’s part of why it could become less activated when I was actually in danger of seeing suicide as the best option. Some part of me knew: “You’re allowed to think about this. I’m not going to panic and take your autonomy away.” So there was nothing I needed to do impulsively to prove that the choice was still mine. I think this is also a particularly stark example of why meaning-making matters so much to me. Horrible things happen. We don’t get to choose all of them, and we certainly don’t get to pretend they weren’t horrible. But what an experience comes to mean inside a person is not dictated by the experience itself. The meanings we make can be strange, complicated, even unsettling from the outside—and still become something we use to survive, adapt, understand ourselves, or move through the world. There’s enormous possibility in that.
August 25, 2026 at 12:43 PM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
"It Goes On" by Katelyn Lau, a wife, cat mom, and student advisor based in Northern California. She enjoys sharing words, but you won’t catch her sharing sashimi. "It Goes On" is the Editor's Pick for our HOPE contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 24, 2026 at 5:15 PM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
"A+" by Susanna Blagrove is a Jamaican writer and poet. She loves reading, writing, and going to the river/beach with her family, to read and write. "A+" is the Editor's Pick for our EXCEED EXPECTATIONS contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 23, 2026 at 8:30 PM
marcellacreates.bsky.social
Name a place you miss from your childhood:

The broken driveway where the house had slid down the hill, probably before I was born, where the last rays of sunshine would warm the cement so you could lie there for a bit in summer shorts and t-shirt as dusk fell…

#MicroMemoir 1/2
mountainash.bsky.social Ash is feral now @mountainash.bsky.social · Aug 15
Name a place you miss from your childhood:

Uncle Joes in Mount Vernon, Md, a decrepit cottage on the Wicomico River where this feral child collected periwinkle snails and crabbed from
Canoes.
tisiphone.bsky.social Tisiphone @tisiphone.bsky.social · Aug 15
Name a place you miss from your childhood.

Fenway Park
August 23, 2026 at 10:45 AM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
#MicroMemoir #ThoughtJournal
#CreativeProcess #MetaCognition
ALT TEXT FOR ENTIRE THREAD: Oh gad. Well, the screensaver time did its job. 😂 I went for a drive and got hit with an absolute blitzkrieg of thought—one idea detonating into another before I could follow the first one through. Personal relationships, research, things I read today, old stories suddenly reorganized from a different vantage point, new language for things I’ve already lived, creative ideas, internal reunions. Boom, boom, boom. Sometimes one thought opened a door and, before I could walk through it, the next one blew open somewhere else. And it’s such a full-body process. Music guides a lot of it. Sometimes I’m listening; sometimes I’m deliberately choosing what emotional territory I want to enter; sometimes I’m performing along like I’m auditioning for something no one asked for. 😂 Tonight, one thread had my inner child hugging my adult self in a way that felt so much like the unexpected comfort I sometimes get from my own child that I had to pull over and weep. Ten minutes later? Somewhere completely different. I probably had 30–40 little realizations in less than an hour. There was no possible way to grab ahold of all of them. So I don’t. I trust that they’re integrating—that the important ones will come back around when they’re ready, hopefully with a little more focused gusto. 😵‍💫😵‍💫
August 23, 2026 at 4:04 AM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
"Lift the Veil" by Carla Rudy, who earned a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College. She had a 25-year puppetry career and now works in a museum."Lift the Veil" is the Editor's Pick for our THE ORDINARY THAT WASN'T contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 23, 2026 at 12:16 AM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
That time that I went on about the social construction of my non-existent favorite color, I guess… 🤷‍♀️😂

#MicroMemoir 🧵
FULL THREAD ALT TEXT: Thinking about how there have been many, many, many occasions in my life when someone gifted me an amethyst thing. I was born in February, so that's not especially weird. I'm a goblin-brained, shiny-rock-loving bitch. But people typically said it was because it was purple, and they just assumed my favorite color was purple. I never said purple was my favorite color, because I specifically do not understand the concept of favorite colors or how people have them. And even if I did have one, it probably wouldn't be purple, because people insisted my favorite color was purple so often that I actually started disliking it. Now I may never know my true feelings on the color purple, lest they be forever blurred by my oppositional nature... Anyway, I like rocks, so it's cool. But purple isn't my favorite color. 😂
August 22, 2026 at 5:33 AM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
Sometimes you pull on a thread and your entire autobiographical understanding collapses…

That’s why this matters. 🧵

#MicroMemoir
ALT TEXT FOR THREAD:: Like… friends. With hindsight, I should have known I was eventually going to find something much worse than I’d ever considered possible in the back of my brain. There were A LOT of things about my behavior that didn’t make sense without that information—and no matter how badly I wanted to change them, I couldn’t seem to. I’d been obsessed with the idea of getting a lobotomy since I was about 7. I was already desperately trying to understand what was wrong with my brain—why I couldn’t seem to BE the person I knew myself to be. I was afraid of it. And despite all my efforts, it only seemed to get more deranged as I got older. There was never a time or place to unload any of it until I hit the edge of my world going about a million miles an hour and face-planted into an escape room made out of all my own ignorant messes. And unfortunately, when I finally found what was underneath them… my life made more sense. I didn’t want the information I extracted from my shadows to make the big picture more coherent. But it did. And once I could see the whole thing, I couldn’t unsee it. That kind of awareness is a death of sorts. The person who survived by not knowing can’t quite exist anymore. But that was also the blessing. Once I could accept what I was looking at, things became movable again. I could start adjusting the limits and settings instead of only living inside them. I wasn’t just the experiencer and the observer anymore. I was also the programmer. And that was the role I’d been cut off from. I think most of us are cut off from that role somewhere, in different ways. Which is why I don’t think we should underestimate what we’re asking of someone when we ask them to see something they’ve survived by not seeing.
August 21, 2026 at 11:25 PM
alethianstrata.bsky.social
This reminded me of something that happened the other day, and I've been thinking about it.

My roommate, his kids, and I were watching a “funny” video compilation.

They were all laughing, but I didn't get it. 🧵

#MicroMemoir #HumanCondition
#Empathy #SocialPsychology
#ThoughtJournal #Metacognition
August 21, 2026 at 8:43 PM
fiveminutelit.bsky.social
"No Connection" by Sophia Snyder, a Philadelphia-based, over-caffeinated, lesbian playwright who occasionally dabbles in other formats. "No Connection" is the Editor's Pick for our OUT OF RANGE contest, part of our 2026 Micromemoir Marathon.
August 20, 2026 at 5:15 PM