Introduction

As one of our contributors reminds us, we’re 60% water and we’re used to moving against it. In this issue, water is an abiding presence: cleansing, creating, renewing, destroying. In grief, a woman climbs over a rocky shoreline to swim in salty water, where everything is silent except that rushing noise. To test the shells of cannoli, sisters place them in boiling water, where even in water, they stay intact. An illicit lover is stranded on volcanic rocks as the tide rolls in, where the seals pass below without glancing up at her. Where the sand migrates south to some other coastal town, engineers dredge sand from the ocean floor to hold off the eroding effects of beachfront development and climate change. Moored between our namesake river and the Atlantic Ocean, in the heavy heat of Carolina, we lifted this 26th issue of Waccamaw from the water–like a good bird flying.