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

Abigail George

Not Goodbye

by Abigail George

December 2023

S. talks of suicide.

She cries. I hold her. What else can I do? She’s the love of my life and she’s in pain so I make her something to eat. She tells me she doesn’t deserve me. That she can see she’s hurting me. I say she’ll feel better after she eats something.

What was she thinking, she asks later, when we’re watching television. How can she do this to me, she asks. I tell her to forget all about it. Like it was the first time she said she would take her own life.

Like I’d never heard her reasons before or read her journal. Like I’d never driven her to the psychiatrist. Shrink’s crazier than me, she said. Never going back there.

At night, especially in winter, the pavements become rivers. The streets become streams lit by moonlight. Windows turn into mirrors that we can see our soul in. We argue but I still want to touch her. Touch the story on her lips. The singing in her fingertips. The promise of her. The fine thread of her.

That independent winter-branch. Wild geese calling. The origin of her hair was an autumn forest. Gold and volcanic-red and rust.

I want to fall asleep in her arms and wake up to the sound of winter rain. Listen to her read sonnets to me. I want to tell her about my childhood cousins. My uncle’s swimming pool in Johannesburg. Eating peaches. Peach juice dripping down our chins.

I want to touch her graceful neck, each of her vertebrae. Her loneliness. Run my fingers up and down her spine.

I want to sink into her country with absentminded blessing.

I dream we’re taking one of our drives to the beach on a lazy Sunday afternoon. We walk hand-in-hand on the warm sand. Afterwards we’ll eat picnic halloumi cheese or hamburgers and drink pink milkshakes. Watch the waves from the car.

She smiles. She laughs. And I tell myself that I know nothing yet of the heartbreak that will follow.

Award-winning short story writer South African Abigail George is a Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net nominated, European Union Poetry Prize longlisted, Writing Ukraine Prize shortlisted, Identity Theory’s Editor’s Choice, Ink Sweat and Tears September Pick of the Month poet/writer who believes in the transformative, restorative, and healing powers of words. Her latest book is the poetry collection Young Galaxies (Mwanaka Media and Publishing, Zimbabwe).