Anuel Rodriguez: It Comes at Night
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
It Comes at Night
The cool October air wraps around my ribcage.
And the trees shed their colors into me.
I count my blessings like I do spare change
as I take a lighter to my feelings.
I think about the stories my uncle used
to tell me about the devil when I was a boy.
He said there was a good reason to
have a dog guarding the house at night.
Why? I asked him. He answered by telling
me about how the devil came each night,
but a dog could keep him from entering the house.
But how? I asked. Because a dog is smart
enough to trick the devil into agreeing to count
every single hair on his fur coat before he
can enter the house to harm the family.
And each night the sun rises before
the devil can finish counting hairs and
the light eventually chases him away until darkness
falls again. I still think about that story
years later. I never kept a dog as a pet.
But I always keep my devils close by, in my pocket.
Anuel Rodriguez is a Mexican-American poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry has previously appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist) and The Acentos Review with work forthcoming in DREGINALD.
