I’m excited to be joining in with The Indie Exchange’s #FlashFiveFriday event. The premise is very simple: five minutes flash blogging or flash fiction based on a prompt set by The Indie Exchange each week. This week the prompt is Friendship.

The Guidelines

#FlashFiveFriday is a weekly flash fiction/flash blogging prompt.

The rules are very simple if you’d like to take part:

1) Write for no longer than five minutes
2) No upper or lower word limits
3) You must write something new
4) You can prepare your post ahead of time but the 5 minute limit still applies
5) If you add your blog post to the weekly linky (found at The Indie Exchange) you must visit five other blogs that week too to show your support

 

#FlashFiveFriday: Friendship

 

#FlashFiveFriday - FriendshipFriendships are wonderful, nurturing, sustaining-and messy.

These last few months, as the U.S. election heated up, many friendships were undoubtedly strained. How could they not be, with both candidates and media sources constantly mocking and denigrating opponents? If you support X or Y (any but the candidate we’ve backed), you’re stupid or heartless, lazy, racist, irresponsible, unrealistic, uncaring, and on and on, brushing with one ugly stroke an entire swath of voters, never considering that they too thought carefully, intelligently, deeply before making a choice.

Partisan lines drawn, hearts hard, we fought with each other, battles no more apparent than online, the streams full of requests, even demands, that anyone voting for the opposing party ‘unfriend me.’

It’s time now to rise from the ashes, put petty grievances behind us, pull together, friend to friend, to remember the love we’ve shared. It’s a time for wonder, a time for joy, a time to cherish our friendships.