Black love. BLVCK LOVE. Black love…

As delicate as a flame.

Birthed with the potential to be dangerous but shrouded with an aura to illuminate lives.

It is a sacrifice.

Made by parties wishing to share their struggles and strengths.

It is raw like skin to skin, potent like breaking wind and relentless like repeat confessors addicted to sin.

Black love is violent. Painful. Unforgiving.

A fight through meadows of lost wars and life

A river of merging souls and conquered strives

Initiation patterned faces narrating ones willingness to die for their own

It is still forming. Ever changing. Consistently.

Inherently passed on from generation to generation, like engraved secret codes told on painted caves of the Khoisan​.

It is rich like the solitude offered by the Sahara and untamed flow of Vic Falls

It is misunderstood. Misconstrued. Underestimated.

Deliberately.

It is about more than girls making videos at 16 for black boys who don’t know that it takes more to be a man than just shedding off some foreskin.

It is more than simply having the pigment but rather appreciating it on another, seeing them from head to toe and appreciating it all, even memorizing their eye color.

It is a journey. A destination

A universe amongst the ruble of what is considered a norm

Black love is more than sticky notes placed around the house with sweet somethings, more than online pictures with long captions basically saying nothing

Black love is the only love I’ve ever known, so to me black love is the best thing

Because it is more than the texture of our skins and the depth of our hearts

More than whispering “kea o rata jo” to mirror a sung “mon’ ife e”

It is not bound by carved monochromatic commandments like the Bible

Sometimes it travels through many moons seeking solace in foreign tribes

Finding treasures in same shades from foreign lands

It is fists paintings to calm ones rage and water down their jealousy

That ‘you made me do this because I love you’ love

Doesn’t always involve weddings rings but it’s that never forget where we are from love

Black love is survival through the rainforests of foreign territory and finding more of yourself through another

Black love is critical

Black love is more undocumented sacrifices

Black love is BLVCK LOVE and BLVCK LOVE is ours…

 

Jade Novelist & Maira Wolfe ©️ 2017
To read more poems from the #Animalistic, you can visit and download the anthology:
THE BLVCK BOOK Download

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