pretentious yet strangely beautiful poetry

[communi_kate]

 'Exauguratio' by Sonya Taafe, from the Fall 2013 edition of Goblin Fruit.

Do not come back, your face a moire of shadows
from furry-winged gulls, your fingers clutching my ankles
with last week's news and tumbling chip wrappers,
telling me in the conversations of strangers
here you are still, awaiting me.
Do not wake me rapping the windows
with wayward crows, tousle my hair
with a passing train, rearrange graffiti 
like milk bottles upon my doorstep
I loved this city before you stole its skin
signed every window with the wild scrawl of your pride.
Do not come here, pretending to centuries
before we missed buses, built bookshelves, dyed our hair.
This place's heart is stronger than your breaking.
These streets know you are not their only dead

For the last four lines, mostly. 

Comments

[everbright]

Wow. I can't decide whether she was angry about someone close to her dying, or warding off grief at something in the neighborhood changing.

[communi_kate]

Me neither. I don't do poetry, but that last line is gorgeous.