White desk with pink notebook, roses, keyboard, and gold paperclips that Francesca Varela uses to copy edit for romance, science fiction, and fantasy authors

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  • Salmon River

    1–2 minutes

    We sit on the rocks by the river, the alder trees whippling, each leaf pulling in different directions. The water casts its own shadow, billowing like window blinds, and as the wind reaches us we can see its path, lit and flickering atop the water, constellations of cold, white sunlight darting across the green river.

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  • Desert Darkness

    1–2 minutes

    There’s a certain kind of darkness the desert has, the kind that seems to rise from the ground itself, latticing its way, muted, through the air, and yet you can still see the knotted limbs of the junipers, and the pock-marked openness, the rock fields and buttes, all of it encased in a muffled kind

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  • Beginning of Time

    1–2 minutes

    Maybe we can still remember the closed-in darkness long ago before we had eyes, and maybe we can remember the sensation of the jolting waters, thick with calcite and aluminum dust, the shallow ocean clicking against our keratin bodies, the dull, brainless consciousness softened into us, our lives dark and endless among the lacy mats

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  • What The World Once Was

    1–2 minutes

    This is what the world once was, low wind across dimpled grasslands, a warm, bruised sweep musked with far-pressed rain, gall oaks whistling as air falls through them. This is what the world once was, a far, clear view, long to the east, to the blue shoulders of the Gorge, the river tucked there, imperceptible,

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Francesca Varela specializes in copy editing for romance, science fiction, and fantasy authors