The Source

Copies

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

love letter

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

The Longest Goodbye

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

The Ghosts She Felt Acutely

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

Movement

The energy in the trees was palpable- at once pulsating and swirling

Conversations with my Lover

The fat little curves of cats’ bellies, and stiff white peaks of egg.

Personal History

You want to understand how someone could be two people. Why you failed to recognise it at the time.

You

Regaining my youth only means losing you all over again.

At the Station

A laugh into the silence, a step into the stillness, and a single breath seems to make the station tremble.

En Attendant

So sit on the roof and watch remotely The wind that makes the spires dance there, slowly

round

of feeling directional

The Sheldonian

That is the beauty of the concert. Music threading its way in and out of the thoughts of a hundred vague spirits in the audience.

Unterwegs

So let us meet at the station, then, and what happens after we can decide again

Affairs

like landmines or arms holding someone they love

Ping-pong

Stupid rules are still rules

Addressed to the Stones:

We’re alive and beyond comparison

Sun sets, small town

So the masks are sloughed off, and my heart stretches a shining ladder, reaches

Wild Flowers

Join me as I walk past the best of gardensIts tulips nod my wayBut their colours filter through my sunglassesAnd don’t quite hit me...

Watching, Seeing

I wonder why it matters so much to me that they’re watching. When I picture you, pulling up at the side of a cobbled...

Slightly Stained

My breath is since-soured coffee and yours is sweet cigarette smoke.

The two

Its embers surround them, licking their skin and feeding their kisses.

The grey itself

Mutuality was not present that night.

Control

The paleness of your legs made them vulnerable in the light that shone in from his bedroom window.

Interned

My books lay open all these three short years,Had time at hand to sit and space to stretch,With pavement walks, contented times quite soft,In...