Momma's Boy
He was a boy,
innocent in ways the world
never gave him credit for,
caught in a storm bigger than his sins,
over sentenced to concrete walls
and steel doors that closed too heavy
for twenty-six years of life.
Prison tried to harden him,
tried to carve away the soft edges,
tried to teach him silence,
but he dialed anyway.
Every day,
four, five times a day,
his voice pressed through the static,
“Hey, Mom.”
A lifeline in a place
where men learned to hide their love.
The others laughed,
rolled their eyes,
mocked him for needing her still.
But he only grinned,
chin lifted,
and said what most men
were too hollow to confess:
“I’m a mama’s boy.
You’re just jealous
your mommas don’t love you that much.”
And in that moment,
he wasn’t an inmate.
He wasn’t a number.
He was a son—
calling home,
reminding her
and himself
that innocence wasn’t dead,
not while love still had a voice.
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