The Train Speaks by Eve L. Ewing

Even now, I dream of them, Quiet nights in the railyard, When the little rat feet skitter beneath me, When the last of the strong men with his gleaming silver buttons has locked the door and laid his hands against me. I see them dancing in every passing cloud.

My babies, my babies. Born unto me in the hills and green lands, loose threads catching in my sharp parts when they don't watch out, blistered hands hauling parcels of burlap as heft and shapeless as bound cotton. They move like rabbits, then. They look for a lash that isn't there, even them that never felt it. It's in their shoulders. The lash lives in their shoulders.

Long after the last biscuit is gone, when the sunrise brings steel mountains, my children look and look through the space I have made for them, the gift I have prepared. They are safe within but can see without.

They feel it before they know the words, then smile when it comes to them—it's flat. The land is flat. And they smile to think of it, this new place, the uncle or cousin who will greet them, the hat they will buy, the ribbons. They know not the cold, my babies. They know not the men who are waiting and angry. They know not that the absence of signs does not portend the absence of danger. My children. My precious ones. I can never take you home. You have none. And so you go, out into the wind.

— 1919 by Eve L. Ewing (Page 10)