Make the Night Go Faster Sofia Samatar under the stolen tarp lashed by the wind under the battered tarp weighted with stones the oldest child pours out the last kerosene lights the lamp divides the last bread she says there was an ogre with a beautiful daughter her hair as heavy as clusters of dates the other children huddle close eyes like asters fairy stories make the night go faster as the child speaks a flake of ash rises on her breath slips through the gap between the tarp and the ground now in the night it is an imp of air and darkness its small frantic heart will dissolve with the dawn it flits into the shell of an abandoned train at the edge of the vast pit that was once the municipal gardens and watches the woman stumbling home with bread under her arm and the scarred dogs snapping at her skirts
Sofia Samatar is the author of the novel A Stranger in Olondria, the Hugo-nominated short story “Selkie Stories Are for Losers,” and other works. She is the winner of the John W. Campbell Award, the Crawford Award, and the British Fantasy Award for Best Novel. Sofia is a co-editor for Interfictions: A Journal of Interstitial Arts, and teaches literature and writing at California State University Channel Islands.
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