BALLAD Poem: When Words Fails Us, by Courtney Calardo

Hello: one word and a handshake is all it took to know you were important
Heard it spoken in my head but left unsaid
as I sat across from you

To share my dreams of becoming a documentary filmmaker
I felt a knowingness from deep within
that we had met before

Our souls entangled
bringing us back to one another
So you could guide me toward
what I‘d been searching for

You helped me discover once more
How to trust my intuition
and the voice that resides
in the lap of my inner child

We were living a dream
disrupted by the complications
of life as humans
Pulled apart toward new adventures

Toward a different kind of existence
Yet somehow finding one other again
To share what we had learned
And see what had remained

In-yun: a Korean term for a karmic connection between souls with encounters from past lives
Sometimes the English language is so disappointing

It reduces the meaning of what it is you’re trying to express
Leading you to overexplain or undervalue the feelings you attempt to surface

Take care: the last words I said
before you went away
What a ridiculous thing to say
But I couldn’t bring myself to say farewell

resisted its finality
Couldn’t bring myself to shut this door
Lock you out
I knew our paths would cross again

But my vocabulary was too limited
and failed to surface a phrase that said
I love you
But I’m not in love with you

I want to be a part of your life
but can’t in the way you want me to
can’t offer the kind of love you deserve
or promise it would be enough for either of us

Not in this lifetime
though perhaps in another
Perhaps that’s why I am drawn to you
In-Yun

Perhaps that is why I can‘t say goodbye
Though they ask me to
Tell me I need to let you go
So we can both move on

Relationships, like words, can be so simple
and fail to grasp our soul’s desires
Why can’t they evolve, as we do,
as we learn and grow

and become something different that works with where we are in this iteration
in this human form,
despite its complications?

Why do we have so many rules and restrictions on how to be human?
On when and how to say goodbye?
When maybe what we really need
is a better way of saying I’ll see you soon.