The Source

Copies

"I want them, long after I leave, to remain together."

Culture Yasmin Beed -

love letter

"a stamp can’t be used again, only kept or discarded."

Culture Keng Yu Lai -

The Longest Goodbye

Oxford became a home I hadn’t known I was missing – a place that understood me without asking.

The Source Helena Zhang -

The Ghosts She Felt Acutely

This year, with the inaugural Blackwell’s Short Story Prize, Cherwell aimed to reconnect with its roots...

The Source Polina Kim -

Latest

Petrichor

"in a quiet hollow on the far side of this field rain patters through the leaves like twinkling glass"

The Lord is a Warrior

"Now, God’s people are soon to flee, Into the wilderness and coarser sands He takes them, they at last are free, But I, loyal servant, loving wife, What is God’s plan for me?"

A Letter To Those Whom my Light Will Guide, In Honour Of Those Whose Light Has Guided Me

"What you are, is complicated. And I love you for that, Because you are complicated, Because you are raw, and soft, and broken."

Return to Oxford

"A peal of percussive raindrops tumble from towering heavens. A lonely leaf joins the fray in a willowing, whispering wash."

"Then there is a sudden pull – my loose thoughts spill over the pebbly surface of the page. Images crashing and breaking against sobering stillness, propelling seafoam into the air, rumpling the Edenic crispness of the page."

Paying Attention

"I wrote that the world feels too much of everything, that I am so lucky to be in it."

Time spent in Oxford

"The photographs on the walls show people years ago in the same spot. Did they feel the same, love the same, breathe the same. It seems impossible that they did, even more so that they did not."

Ode to the Sunflowers my Dad bought for me

"You – yellow in 5 Acts, yellow in division to make up a whole – belong to the morning"

Freshers’ Flu – Why My Mum Invented COVID

"Two cultures, both alike in dignity In times of (un)fair Corona, where we lay our scene From ancient tradition one plans to be set free where alcohol makes the liver unclean From forth the fatal minds of these two foes Parents worry they'll lose the apple of their eye; with misadventures and revealing clothes Do with Fresher's Week her dignity will die."

Four Children

"And I sat with my back to the skies as I mouthed out a prayer to the winds and imagined them ghosts; for where I sat, half-anaesthetised, four children had used to sit"

Essay Crisis

People often say that progress, is not always linear. and p r o g r e s s, sometimes doesn't always look like 2,000 words* (including citations) on a Microsoft Word document"

My Dog and Its Owner

"My dog had lost its collar in a cave, Whereto, through chasing night, astray it ran After my whistle panicked in its ears."

The Sword-Cross

"A warrior of Palestine Traversed with a Cross for sword, From Babylon to Jerusalem, Until he spoke not word."

Veraneio

"Raised in the endless, relentless summer of tropical living, snapshots of summer swamp my memories of childhood – beachside days, aching sunburns, blond locks tainted unflatteringly green by chlorinated pools."