White desk with pink notebook, roses, keyboard, and gold paperclips that Francesca Varela uses to write environmental fiction

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  • A December Hummingbird

    1–2 minutes

    December always begins with a string of clear, cold days. This was one of them. I walked home from the bus stop, head down, pace quick, headphones in my ears. The air churned around me, crisp and ancient, and bled of sun. I kept my hands in my pockets. My breath felt hot against the

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  • Walking at Night

    1–2 minutes

    Above the concrete sky, and the rest of the whimsy, we could’ve been real. But you looked down and laughed, and wasn’t I cute? So I pointed for you, to the flat place in the sky where it all caves in, and I guided your hand like a bug on water all legs and skittish

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  • The Beauty and Peril of Connection

    1–2 minutes

    I sat awake, propped up on my elbows at two in the morning, and I scrolled through my phone. I hoped that, somehow, the repetitiveness of social media would help me fall back asleep. Instagram. Facebook. Twitter. Videos. Advertisements. Pictures. All just a blur. But, then, something caught my eye — a photo of two

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  • The Moon and I

    1–2 minutes

    Sometimes I ask the moon for guidance. I stand at the window, my breath fogging up the glass, and I reach my hands up. The moon is alive in the way of mountains and rivers, through the long-lived presence of time, and the humming of old things. The clean blue moonlight pours through the city

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Learn more about Francesca Varela's novels