In the recesses of the woman’s mind
there is a warehouse. The warehouse
is covered with wisteria. The wisteria wonders

what it is doing in the mind of the woman.
The woman wonders too.
The river is raw tonight. The river is a calling

aching with want. The woman walks towards it
her arms unimpaired and coated
with moonlight. The wisteria wants the river.

It also wants the warehouse in the mind
of the woman, wants to remain in the ruins
though water is another kind of original ruin

determined in its structure and unpredictable.
The woman unlaces the light across her body.
She wades through the river while the twining
wisteria

bleeds from her mouth, her eyes, her wrist-veins,
her heart valve, her heart. The garden again
overgrows the body—called by the water

and carried by the woman to the wanting river.
When she bleeds the wisteria, the warehouse
in her mind is free and empty and the source

of all emptiness. It is free to house the night sky.
It is free like the woman to hold nothing
but the boundless, empty, unimaginable dark.

Poets

Brynn Saito