Black hair

Black hair is a language

spoken without a mouth,

a history braided into silence

and shouted through crowns.

It rises toward the sun

because it remembers Africa,

remembers heat, remembers survival,

remembers God shaping beauty with intention.

Each coil is a revolution.

Each kink is a refusal

to be straightened into someone else’s comfort,

pressed flat beneath someone else’s fear.

Our hair has known chains

and still learned how to grow.

It has known hands that loved it

and hands that tried to tame it.

Still, it grows.

Locs carry patience,

years of faith twisted together.

Braids are maps

once guiding freedom,

now guiding pride.

Afros are halos,

crowns wide enough to hold ancestors.

They told us our hair was unprofessional,

unkempt, too much.

But “too much” is another word for powerful

when the world is built on less.

Black hair is ceremony.

It is Sunday morning grease and prayer.

It is barbershop laughter,

beauty shop wisdom,

combs snapping like drumbeats of resilience.

When a Black child learns to love their hair,

an empire quietly falls.

When a Black person wears their hair free,

history exhales.

Black hair is not a trend.

It is testimony.

It is proof that we were never meant

to disappear, blend in, or bow down.

It grows upward

because it knows where it came from

and it refuses to forget.