balance – Helen Marie Joyce

The Children of Leviathan (Chapter three)

Heavy breathing, her fists clenched behind her back against the door, her legs shaking.

Eyes still shut, she took a long deep breath.

Relief.

She had just marginally escaped the double wrath of the strange limbo-like wilderness, manifesting itself in the imminent Electric storm and the pack of crones prowling outside. Yet somehow she did not feel entirely safe even behind the bolted door. A false sense of security grew in the pit of her stomach. She could not be sure whether the insides of this House on the Hill held no hostility, no grudges against her, and did not seek to harm her soul. In fact, she was more certain than not that the House was awaiting her arrival in order to begin its foul play. However, she could not afford to be overcome with panic and so she tried to calm herself by thinking, “confront each fear as it comes, not before”.

But was it fear indeed? Fear of what? Of the unknown, fear of something real, or an illusion? Fear of feeling helpless and alone, fear of feeling powerless and lost? Fear of pain, of loss, of damnation? She still did not know which questions to ask, and this scared her more than any demons or traps Leviathan placed in her path. Continue reading The Children of Leviathan (Chapter three)

Aphrodite’s Child

Life behests that before I can address the jarring sordid question,
you must have reached your attaining mark.

Embracing our beings’ essence with discretion, would not,
should not strangle the spark.

My hopes dragged through the darkest of the dark,

while your dreams evaporating, fading, and paling out. Continue reading Aphrodite’s Child

The Count of Three

To tell a truth of blood and wine

Takes tears of liquid steel and a lazy tongue

Clenched fists, holding on to a hope that fades

Into the grave, sieving through the cracks like fine sand

I kissed your mind and our souls collided.

So I’ll give you to the count of three,

‘Til you think of me.

Continue reading The Count of Three

The nth Life

I awake; eyes open wide, ears pierced back, I lay still for a while and take in the damp dense air.

It smells like victory tonight.

I creep; silently, dauntingly, down the roof and over the lines of fences in the deadest hour of the night.
It is now my moment to thrive.

I search; in utter stealth, clandestinely for the gifts of the dark. I am omniscient and dominantly alone to reap the rewards of the nth life.

Continue reading The nth Life

No Time

‘No time.’ For something as perpetual as time, it’s so contradictory to never have enough.

Time is one of the few perpetual notions that humans have identified as part of our own need to comprehend life. The universe, the world, our world, our existence is shaped around time. Antiphon the Sophist has said that “…time is not a reality (hypostasis), but a concept (noêma) or a measure (metron)”; a concept to help us bring a metric order to Chaos, with the general consensus relating to its introduction being after the Big Bang.
It is intangible, it is relentless, it only moves forward. The glory of the present moment only lasts for a fragment of time, and each moment is experienced for its brief existence, then it belongs in the past and a new present one takes it place. A continuous sequence of present moments, that creates its relative sequence of moments-of-gone, leaving a trail of events called ‘Past’ behind for the little Hansels and Grettels to find in the ‘Woods of Forever’.

Continue reading No Time

The Disadvantages of a Multi-Cultural Nature

Dear Gray

10 years ago, if I would have thought about it consciously, I would have concluded that I should consider myself amongst the lucky ones of my generation.
Born in dual nationality, that meant I was bilingual before I went to primary school. Attending a British school, I was exposed to students from a multitude of nationalities and cultures. This made me tolerant, seeing the endearing charm of personalities from different backgrounds, however this also cultivated a thirst within me to learn more and more. I guess this is the backbone of why I enjoy travelling as much as I do, when the means allow.

Continue reading The Disadvantages of a Multi-Cultural Nature

The Forest of Forever (Chapter one)

So she walked a whisper like walk, weightless and wistful, as her white gown trailed behind her frail footsteps. Her head hung low and the usual sea of thoughts filled her mind. It was no wonder she could not hear the sound of her feet or the rustling of leaves; voices muffled and reverberant, a multitude of shrieks and woes, of secrets and confessions. For the all of eternity this would be her price to pay, in the conscious awake part of her being, in penitence, in restlessness, in the prison of her mind for the crime she had been condemned of. According to her impious fate, now, as it was written in the Scrolls of the Stars, she roamed the Forest of Forever, searching for questions she only knew the answers to. ‘Balance’. She sought the equilibrium of Balance.

The voices were never discernible. The voices were always there. Day in, day out. Her dreams were her only haven. She solaced in the revelry of her subconscious escapades where she would be free from fear, free from frustration. ‘In Somnii, Veritas. Per Somnii, Libertas.’ She had no other place to go than to retreat to her core at nightfall, in the midst of the Forest and seek redemption for her scarred soul.

Continue reading The Forest of Forever (Chapter one)