my love is black though my love is not black ::
think the darkness cradling the milky way ::
imagine quick light flowing down the back
of my throat, glowing—i swallow the day ::

my love is black, an absorbing array
of colors :: gold yolk escaping the cracked
shell :: a shiny silver moon-coin to play ::
a juicy peach, plump plums, cup of cognac ::

my love is black, the only way i know
to live :: now fierce and demanding, now free
and unpossessed :: so for my magnet, my
love becomes steel, then, for my butterfly,
will not a flower but a whole field be ::
my love and my blackness together go—

Copyright © 2023 by Evie Shockley. Originally published in Poem-a-Day on February 1, 2023, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“When Guest Editor Patricia Smith told me she wanted to gather some ‘Black love sonnets’ for February, I immediately started thinking about the relationships among those three words. The poem began then and there.”
—Evie Shockley