Olivia Everett is currently earning an MA in Creative Writing and Multicultural Literature at East Carolina University. She has served as an Editorial Assistant for Images Literary Arts Magazine, Tar River Poetry and North Carolina Literary Review.

Blue

I plucked you from among the cut-throat fish of a river bottom the first time I crossed a slough in Montana. Summer, though I waded through hip-deep snowmelt. Feet I could not feel, toes sliding and wrapping over rock. Until you were there. As full as any stare or moon. Perfectly blue, sky between shreds of cloud, and I wanted you. I pulled you from the cradle. Rounder. Heavier. You carried a flood inside. As if my hands were not real unless they were filled. I wanted to crack you open. To see if you were blue inside, or crystalline. Fear got the better—that nothing would be there. I held you and traced your faint fault line. Weighed down with river and immaculate. Declaring that mystery has a heaviness all its own.