Douglas Allen Rhodes

I was five,
or four,
but way too young
to sit in that darkness
which only children know,
the darkness that hides
the monsters.

Too young to sit at bedtime
and hear my mom’s
steady, quiet voice
talk of people
who might come to kill me,
someday.

People
who’d done it before,
people
who kept track
of who was and who wasn’t
a Jew.

I remember my irrational,
childhood fear,
when she told me about
having to hide in attics,
that ours was full of spiders,
because nothing scared me more,

not darkness,
or monsters,
or even men
that got together
with lists
and guns,
and came to little boys’ houses
to kill them.