A decade of trains that lost track
have just turned up in my esophagus,
they are all bile as I am all hands.

This is why I was never frightened by ghosts
and sea specters:

they have been inside of me
the whole time.  

Sometimes, hot coal would hit my cuticles,
I could see the steam.
I could feel something like wheels
spinning a web on my nail-beds;
something sat in me like I were a flowerpot.

All that remained were the sticks
of my skin, blood bubbling from below.

But they have been there
the whole time.
I have been a ship in a bottle,
I have been a conductor without knowing.

Fever outlined my spine with its fingers
and I felt I was being kicked by
a fetus.

I was a hallway for phantoms
that believed they still have their limbs
and if not, quills
or a fish with gills and a fin
or locomotive. Mechanical movement still.

How could I not realize
they were inside of me the whole time,

soaking up the nutrition from my throat
shifting the razor while I shave?
Thousands of train-ghosts
crawled from me by an engine of *****.

Not one knows where they are.