I. Before They Named You
O Black Queen,
how radiant is your skin.
Deep as earth after rain,
dark as waters
before God called forth light.
Before the world called you burden,
God called you good.
Before they measured your beauty
against another woman’s face,
heaven had crowned you.
Your body carries
the handwriting of God,
the breath of women
who refused to disappear.
Your beauty is revelation:
ebony, mahogany,
bronze, honey, copper,
umber and gold.
No single shade contains you.
No single story speaks for every Black woman.
Yet every one is crowned.
Your hair remembers.
They called it unruly
because it would not bow.
But your braids are maps,
your locs are roots,
your coils are scripture.
You are scholar and artist,
healer and warrior,
prayer and thunder.
Your dignity was never theirs to give.
You are the image of God
without revision.
II. What the Fire Could Not Take
O Black Queen,
they tried to chain you.
They priced your body
and called it law.
They stole your labor,
your children,
your language,
your rest.
But your spirit did not die.
You stood in the night
with grief in your mouth
and fire in your bones.
You turned mourning into song,
hunger into provision,
broken ground into life again.
The world called you strong
because it did not want
to help you carry anything.
It praised your endurance
because praise was cheaper than justice.
They called you angry
when you named the wound.
But your anger was prophecy
God asking Cain,
What have you done?
You prayed through tears.
God heard you.
God saw you.
God remembers.
You are worthy of rest,
tenderness,
safety,
and love that does not first
require your blood.
Let no nation praise your strength
while ignoring your suffering.
Let no church honor your devotion
while leaving your body undefended.
You survived.
But survival is not
the end of your story.
III. When the Queen Rises
O Black Queen,
rise.
Rise with Hagar,
seen by the God who sees.
Rise with Miriam,
Deborah, Esther, Mary,
and Magdalene,
leaving the garden
with resurrection in her mouth.
You are not an afterthought
in the story of God.
Your tears are in the psalms.
Your rage is in the prophets.
Your courage is in the Gospel.
Your survival is resurrection.
Take back your name.
Take back your body.
Take back your voice.
Take back the room,
the pulpit,
the classroom,
the page,
the throne.
Not to become
what oppressed you.
Your reign is not domination.
Your reign is justice.
Your power is freedom
to be fully human.
May the Black girl never shrink
to fit another person’s fear.
May the Black woman
be loved while living.
May the elder rest
beneath the shade of what she planted.
The world owes you
more than praise.
It owes you justice,
safety,
truth,
rest.
But before the debt is paid,
you are Queen.
O Black Queen,
rise.
Remember.
Speak.
Reign.
Be free.
Fabian S. Adderley is a contextual theologian and pastoral minister originally from the Bahamas. He holds a B.A. in Pastoral Ministry and Philosophy, a Master of Divinity, a Master of Arts in Theology, and is currently pursuing a post-graduate Master of Theology (ThM). His work explores vocation, suffering, and the lived realities of faith within marginalized communities, engaging the intersection of Black Catholic experience, social structures, and the Church’s pastoral imagination.
