Dear Readers,

When we launched Waterwheel Review, we were keen to explain why we were so moved and motivated by the image of the waterwheel. Water stands for language, an ever flowing, renewable source; the waterwheel, an engine of labor, circles through, lifting words and then dropping them back into the running stream. Our magazine is a mill, we said, where the waterwheel powers writing and publishing. “We want—and need—to make things.”

For a couple of years, now, we have known that we can’t make enough of our own things while we give so much energy to the work of others. We have had to cut substantially the time and attention devoted to our own writing, and mostly we have been glad to do it, determined to find a way to repay our own work in the end. We never did find that way.

If we could quit our jobs and earn that income publishing this magazine, we would take that deal in an instant. But that’s not the world we live in. For many, many months we have known this, but we couldn’t accept it until now. And thank goodness for that.

Every single issue of this magazine has been a wonder that transported and enchanted us. We can’t say we gloried in every moment. We read or edited or built the site at times while sick, exhausted, grieving—that’s the nature of any publication. But we damn well gloried in every word, every paired image and sound.

Four years and thirty-six issues: What an honor to publish our contributors. What a privilege to offer stunning work to our readers. We must use the word pleasure, too, always rolled out to accompany “honor and privilege,” but pleasure isn’t strong enough, nor is gratitude nor joy nor blessing. For once we find ourselves at a loss for words to express precisely what it has meant to keep this waterwheel turning.

Maybe this will do it: How many times does anyone ever fully achieve the glittering, half-glimpsed vision floating above; that winking, flirting piece of art we ache to manifest? For the three of us, precisely this once.

We will keep making things and so will you. We started this magazine with the image of the waterwheel and a Jean Rhys quote, and we will end in the same way, as we thank you for reading and submitting, and wish you and yours all the very best:

Listen to me. All of writing is a huge lake. There are great rivers that feed the lake, like Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky. And there are mere trickles, like Jean Rhys. All that matters is feeding the lake. I don’t matter. The lake matters. You must keep feeding the lake.

—Claire, Suzanne, Cheryl

September 1, 2024: Waterwheel Review will stay online for the foreseeable future. It remains as it looked for the final June 2024 issue.

Waterwheel Review

Literature Without Labels

CG Miller

There’s Something a Little Wrong with Everything

by CG Miller

February 2021 (reprinted January 2024)

She convinces me the dead of night is the best time to bury something you’re finished with. Draws her finger along my spine when I tell her about it after our first time; my first time with anyone. An S shape, a forward twist at opposite convex sides, a rib hump that looks like something swelling up inside, an uneven hip, equally uneven shoulders, a neck cocked slightly sideways—these are mine to bear. I wear a brace to keep it from getting worse. She isn’t bothered. She shows me all the scars her dad gave her before he left, shows me her lazy eye, her fallen arches, a pop in both shoulders every time she raises her arms above her head. Tells me there’s something a little wrong with everything.

“I’m done with the brace now,” I tell her.  

“Let’s bury the stupid thing,” she says. 

We choose the creek a block from home, behind the cemetery, so it’s fitting. I’ve heard stories of dogs hung on telephone wire and lost children in these woods, though I don’t mention these things to her. My older brother was once chased by a man here in broad daylight. But she doesn’t know that, so I don’t care about it. 

The night’s colder than it’s been all year. The moon guides us past the creek and the sprawling trees before we round a clearing for electrical towers. We pass two towers before we find a spot she calls perfect, though I see nothing that differentiates it from the rest. It’s near the tree line but not fully underneath its shadow. We toss our shovels to the ground and she pulls out a pipe and we smoke weed before we dig. She pulls out two cigarettes afterwards and smokes them both, not offering me one, which is fine, because I hate cigarettes, but I’m not sure she knows this yet. We hadn’t known each other long enough to know things like that. 

We take our shovels to the ground and relearn the feeling of moving earth. My back hurts doing this. But it’s worth it. 

It doesn’t take long to dig deep enough for the brace, so we toss it in when we think we’re finished, and she pulls out a flask to celebrate after we’ve thrown enough dirt on it to never see the thing again. We drink and kiss over our accomplishments. 

“No more braces,” she says as liquor dribbles down her chin from a rushed pour. “Or crutches.” 

She pours liquor on the ground for the brace, then we grab the shovels and walk back the way we came. We cut through a hole in a fence that leads into the back of the cemetery, taking turns off both the pipe and flask, sometimes not being sure which was which. We hop from graveyard plaque to graveyard plaque acting like the grass is lava. Her idea. I feel my hip shift when I land wrong on a plaque and it sends a shooting pain down my left leg. It feels deserved. 

I ask, “You think our shovels will make us look like grave robbers?” 

“What’s life without a little danger?” she says.

I think: a life without danger. 

Tombstones appear in place of plaques now and she puts her shovel into the ground in front of one and acts like she’s gonna start digging. I gasp. She laughs. Who the hell is she? I want to turn away and run, keep on the grass this time. What have I done? For the rest of my life I’ll think of my first time, and I’ll see her trying to dig up a body.

“A friend is picking me up,” she tells me.

God is real!

“I had a lot of fun,” she says.

I think I say something back, something appropriate, cause she smiles and asks for a hug. I do it, though my back is killing me. My spine snakes my body into odd positions to try to calm the inflammation in my muscles. I lean on the butt of the shovel as a red muscle-car zooms through the narrow cemetery roads and picks her up, and she disappears into the night like she was never there to begin with.

My brace. My brace. My crutch. 

I turn back and jog like I’m prepared to run for miles. A drop of rain splashes perfectly on my nose. It makes me run faster, avoiding all plaques like any normal person would.

I cut back through the hole in the fence and scramble over the road like some lost doe. If headlights catch me, my face will look utterly unsure. The rain picks up. I run down the clearing, pass two towers and look. Where is it? Where did we dig? I’m drunk and stoned and now searching through the fog of rain and everything is turning into puddles and mud. My back aches like it’s never ached before. 

I find a spot that looks like nothing special. I think I’m digging in the right place. Why didn’t we put a marker to honor the spot? I’m just tossing up mud that gives way for more mud to drain. I’m not getting any closer. I might not even be in the right spot. Why on earth would I bury my brace? I wasn’t even done with it. I wasn’t done with it. I wasn’t done with it.

CG Miller is a God-fearing man who writes out of Grand Prairie, Texas, with his wife and daughter by his side. He loves reading short story collections and watching movies that make him think. He dabbles in both art and music. He has published in Menda City Review and Brilliant Flash Fiction.