It’s used in condescension. The name for sissies and weaklings who haven’t outgrown their mother’s skirts. It resents the boy that clings longer, harder, tighter than he should.

It is a label, sticky and hard to peel off.

But sometimes the boy is bigger than the label. Sometimes his love is of super glue proportions. Sometimes he plasters himself with billboard-size lettering and proclaims it proud to a world he couldn’t care less about and knows very little of.

So much so that only the mama really gets how bold the declaration is. How wild the love.

So she cups it in her heart and still it spills over the edges of her eyelids as he crawls out of bed and into her shadow while she types the dark hours away. And at her feet he is all the peace and contentment she could wish for herself.

She watches and watches and she knows the truth – boy’s mama – her five-year-label now.

Her new name.

A perfect fit.

Linked to Emily’s Chatting at the Sky.