My Love
By Bruce Nugent
My love has hair
Like midnight,
But midnight fades to dawn.
My love has eyes
Like starlight,
But starlight fades in morn.
My love has a voice
Like dew-fall,
But dew-fall dies at a breath.
My love has love
Like life’s all,
But life’s all fades in death.
There is something exquisitely fragile about this poem. It is brief. It is lyrical. It feels almost like a hush between night and morning. And yet, beneath its simplicity lies a quiet depth—especially for LGBTQ+ readers.
Nugent never specifies the gender of “my love.” In the 1920s, that ambiguity mattered. It was protective, yes—but it was also expansive. It allowed queer readers to recognize themselves in the poem without explanation or apology. The beloved exists purely as beloved.
About the Poem
Structurally, the poem is built on a pattern of comparison followed by inevitability:
Midnight → dawn
Starlight → morning
Dew-fall → breath
Life → death
Each image is beautiful. Each image is temporary.
Midnight is lush and enveloping—but it yields to daylight.
Starlight dazzles—but disappears at sunrise.
Dew glistens—but vanishes with warmth.
Life itself—however full—ends.
At first glance, the poem can feel almost mournful. Everything fades. Every beautiful thing is subject to time.
But the emotional power of the poem lies in tension. The speaker does not diminish the beloved because these things fade. Instead, he elevates them by comparing them to fleeting wonders. The beloved is aligned with the most luminous, delicate moments in nature—the kinds of beauty that feel almost sacred precisely because they cannot last.
The repetition of “My love has…” creates intimacy and insistence. The speaker lingers over physical attributes—hair, eyes, voice—before arriving at the final stanza: “My love has love / Like life’s all.” That line deepens the poem. The beloved is not merely beautiful; the beloved embodies love itself.
And yet, even that—“life’s all”—fades in death.
Rather than nihilism, the poem reads as an acknowledgment of impermanence. It recognizes that love exists within time, within bodies, within a world that changes. For queer readers—especially those who have known love constrained by secrecy, distance, or social pressure—the awareness of fragility can feel familiar. Love can feel luminous and precarious at the same time.
Nugent’s tone remains gentle throughout. There is no bitterness, no rage—only clear-eyed tenderness. The beauty of the beloved is described without ornamented excess. The poem trusts its images. Midnight. Starlight. Dew. Life. They are enough.
What makes this poem linger is its honesty about time. It does not promise permanence. It does not deny mortality. Instead, it suggests that beauty and love are made more intense by their fleeting nature.
Midnight matters because it ends.
Starlight dazzles because it disappears.
Dew captivates because it will not last.
So too with love.
In just twelve lines, Nugent captures something universal: to love is to embrace what is luminous and fragile at once. And in doing so, he leaves us with a quiet truth—the fact that something fades does not make it less beautiful. It makes it precious.
About the Poet
Bruce Nugent (1906–1987) was a writer, artist, and an important voice of the Harlem Renaissance. He moved in the same creative circles as Langston Hughes and other luminaries of the period, but what distinguishes Nugent is his openness about queer desire—something remarkably rare for the time.
His short story Smoke, Lilies and Jade is often cited as one of the earliest published works by an African American writer to portray same-sex attraction with directness. While many writers of the era coded or obscured queer themes, Nugent allowed them to surface with surprising clarity.
As a Black gay man in early 20th-century America, Nugent navigated multiple layers of marginalization. His work frequently blends vulnerability and boldness—soft imagery paired with radical presence. Simply writing love poetry that could be read as queer was an act of quiet defiance.
“My Love” may appear modest in scale, but its existence speaks volumes. It offers beauty without justification. It does not defend love; it simply names it.
Joe
The Closet Professor 