five on the fifth

Vol. 10 Issue 9 | August 2025

In This Issue

Horizon (Cover Photo): Mahdis Marzooghian

Do You Remember? (Nonfiction): Kiandra de Bruin

Hibernaculum (General Fiction): Brittany Hague

The Spanish Pot (Flash Fiction): Julia Rajagopalan

Halloween Block Party (Flash Fiction): William Nixon

___________________________________

Editor’s Note:

I wanted to take a minute to thank our lovely readers and submitters for their patience as we navigated through a very difficult time back in June. The heaviness of the world’s current bleak state of affairs has weighed very heavily on me and the Five on the Fifth team as a whole for a while, which is why we needed to take some time away. But now, coming back to our beloved literary community and the warm comfort and embrace of words, we feel so ready to take on whatever comes our way. We hold you all and so dear in our hearts and hope our magazine brings the same comfort and joy to your lives that you bring to ours. And so for you — the show must go on!

Lastly, I do realize that our fifth piece is missing, but as it goes sometimes and has happened before in the ten years we’ve been publishing, our editorial team strongly believes that quality always wins over quantity, and while we’re all about “fives” here, sometimes bringing you four solid pieces feels just enough. We hope you enjoy this issue after our brief hiatus.

With love, light, and hope,

Mahdis Marzooghian

Five on the Fifth Editor-in-Chief