Perhaps your ancestors were cobblers or herders, but when I call you Queen, it is so. You are my Queen. When I think of black love, I see your face looking at me across the table or beneath me as I ask for acceptance into your soul. Black love changed the history of the world and mine. You changed the way the world looks at us. You granted us your strength, and we nursed from your bosom and drank in the power that made us stand tall. When I think of black love, I think of my children sitting at your feet, getting their hair braided, your nimble fingers making them look like the picture we see of Africans. A mother and her children have a sacred bond. It is a black love that defines the success of a family, a heritage. Every black woman is a ladder that gives us the rungs to ascend into being better men for them. When I think of black love, I see grandparents telling the stories spoken to them years before. Before we wrote, we were the keepers of knowledge down through the ages, words handed down through time. There must always be someone who knows the truth. There must always be someone to tell our story. Black love is something you can taste. When you sit down at dinner, you see collard greens, fried chicken, cornbread, pot pie, ham, and multiple desserts. That is the love you slide past your pallet. Black love is a calling card. When a friend is sick, black love bakes a cake makes potato salad and chicken. Delivered because the sisterhood refuses to let a friend suffer alone or hungry.

When I think of black love, I think of the way you hold me and give more than you are getting in some moments, and yet black love puts us back into a balanced existence repeatedly.

Black love.

You are the fulfillment of my dreams. You are the answers to questions I did not know how to ask. It is untainted when something is pure; it is whole in its most natural form. Black love is pure and absolute, and I am thankful that you bathe me in your black love every day. When I call you Queen, it is so. There is no other way to address you. You are black love, and the way you love me makes black love my favorite thing.