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

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  • At Sunset

    1–2 minutes

    Please. Don’t forget there are stars. Sometimes I look at the sky, at the sunset red along the treetops, and I feel nothing at all. I’m not really sure where this nothing comes from. All I know is that if I keep staring, just keep watching the sun, then something will stir, and, once again,

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  • To A Cottonwood Tree (Memories of Spring)

    1–2 minutes

    We are related. All life is, and all non-life; every particle of the universe. Your cotton fluff is spring’s silent snowfall. It carries through the wind, pieces of you, arms reaching out. So peaceful it is sacred. Far in the distance the fluff is pouring out against the sunlight, just falling and falling until, all

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  • To Hear The Earth Speak – A Short Story

    3–5 minutes

           They told me I was deaf, but I didn’t believe them. The music was always there. Always strongest at the sunrise, bending the ancient colors of the sky until they were inside me. I knew sound as I saw it. The yellow sap of cedar trees sang directly into me, gave all the

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  • The Eyes of the Owl

    3–5 minutes

    There is a tree in my forest that I love more than all the others. I call it my forest, but it’s not really mine. It doesn’t change because I claim it, but continues breathing and flowing and catching the wind. So I claim it not. Below the canopy, ferns and ivy push through a

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Learn more about Francesca Varela's novels