Love is an experience, a full-body experience, a care practice. It is often hard to put into words, but the new anthology “Black Love Letters,” provides a great model for how to truly express love of self and love of community. Here are five writers from that anthology that found just the right words to embody the magic of what it means to love and be loved.

“Wherever you are in your journey along yourself, whether out or still sheltered from view, young or old, new or studied in this knowing of yourself, you are loved. . . May your pleasure be God’s delight. May you find yourself in rooms where your laugh is big and honest. May the world that hates you know a quick poison. May your tomorrow bloom long.” – TO FAMILY, ALPHABET MAFIA, TISH ‘N’ NEM, JAYSON NEM, LANGSTON NEM, AND MAYBE YOU, Danez Smith

“You were a masterpiece completed, the astronomical line at the end of this obsidian race. You were the footprint of the world found in a pool of black glass, a shimmering surface. Your black was on purpose.” – SO I CAN FACE THE FEAR OF LIVING, Sojourner Brown

“You’re teaching me devotion and self-love and I’m learning how many selves there are to love and the depth of all that’s reflected in my own.” – ANCESTORS, Justus Cornelius Pugh

“We must treat each other with dignity, tenderness, respect, and kindness. All of these are appropriate expectations. But this is also true: when we falter, when we fail, or even just when we lock horns, grace can be our saving grace.” – BLACK LOVE AS GRACE, Imani Perry

“Thank you, Black Church; for, at your best, you met me like Jesus met the woman at the well, and instead of offering harsh rebuke or caustic lesson, he greeted her at her own level, right where she lived, emotionally and psychologically, to take her where she could have hardly anticipated she would ever be, and in the end, to a place where she finally understood she needed to be. Some call it salvation; I call it love.” – LOVE LETTER TO THE BLACK CHURCH, Michael Eric Dyson