If Tears Could Build A Stairway
Author: Unknown

If tears could build a stairway,
and memories a lane.
I would walk right up to Heaven
and bring you back again.

A thousand words won’t bring you back,
I know because I’ve tried;
And neither will a million tears,
I know because I’ve cried.

Remembering you is easy,
I do it every day.
My missing you is heartache
that never goes away.

No farewell words were spoken,
No time to say “Goodbye”.
You were gone before I knew it,
and only God knows why.

My heart still aches with sadness,
and secret tears still flow.
What it meant to love you –
No one can ever know.

But now I know you want me
to mourn for you no more;
To remember all the happy times
life still has much in store.

Since you’ll never be forgotten,
I pledge to you today~
A hollowed place within my heart
is where you’ll always stay.

No one knows who wrote this poem, and there are numerous variations, but if you’ve lost someone dear to you then you know how this poem covers many of the emotions of loss. I usually don’t post anonymous poems, but a dear friend sent me this one (actually a variation of it). After she sent it, I knew I wanted to use it. It’s feelings that I have felt over and over.

Q
Hannah Sanghee Park, 1986

May I master love, undo its luster
do in the thing that makes us lust?

May I speed through the body’s sinew
to marrow? Or is toiling a part of

the gaining of trust? May I pare and narrow
your body down, and open it to my

cupidity’s arrow? May I find my
response to body’s unanswered call,

(if the want leaves you wanting, at all)?

&A
Hannah Sanghee Park, 1986

Being a matter
of importance, there

is no mastering
this but to bind you,

thrash and all, to the
mast. O you won’t reach

irresistible song,
but the rope will teach

you the body’s give.
Go down to the bone,

then tell me again
there what matters. It

will give you every
-thing you need to know

about what I cannot tell you and then,
just maybe then, could it be enough.

About This Poem

“This is a two-part poem, the ‘Q’ of a ‘Q-and-A.’ The speaker is urgent, urging this line of inquiry to get to the heart of the matter. ‘And-A’ will answer in the way all matters of the heart are answered: with patience.” – Hannah Sanghee Park

Hannah Sanghee Park is the author of “The Same-Different,” which won the 2014 Walt Whitman Award and is forthcoming from Louisiana University Press in 2015. She attends the Writing for Screen & Television Program at the University of Southern California School of Cinematic Arts and lives in Los Angeles.