This poem tears apart the illusion that weight gain = happiness/comfort.

Beneath a “healthy” body might be something starved, hollow, and quietly decaying—an inner life no one bothers to see.

Dark, raw, and unapologetic, it exposes the cost of being visibly fine while starving inside.

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The Cloak

©️ 2026 Shelly Moore

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“Glad to see you’re happy,” they say.

Referring to the extra weight

I carry on my hips and face

as if it came from brighter days.

.

They call it comfort, call it peace,

a softness earned, a sweet release.

But every inch of swelling flesh

is decay slightly overdressed.

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They know not how I’m deeply starved,

emaciated, ravaged with scars.

The body they can see stands guard,

while inside I collapse, weak and charred.

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My sturdy bones now splintered chalk.

Dry sockets where the marrow rots.

My prayers hang limp in hollow air.

No echo answers. Nothing’s there.

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My sexual pulse, once heat and flame,

now something gutted, skinned of name.

A husk that twitches out of habit,

longs to feel, longs to have it.

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My mind once sharp enough to cut,

now chews itself, then stitches shut.

Thoughts circle like a starving pack

and eat whatever’s still intact.

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A ribcage full of brittle lace.

A tongue gone gray inside my face.

The lungs collapse in dusty folds,

breathing in what silence holds.

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A heart that beats because it must.

Unfueled by lust, now fighting rust.

Starved of touch, starved of depth.

Starved of anything with breath.

.

So I consume. I pack it in.

Overfeed the cloak I live within.

Mouth to hand and hand to mouth,

the famine spreads from north to south.

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Stuff it down where it can’t scream.

Bury it beneath what’s seen.

And still it gnaws, still it claws.

A quiet, patient set of jaws.

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So I expand.

I bloat. I swell.

A padded, pressurized living Shell.

They smile and say, “She’s doing fine!”

If they’d only look they’d see the signs.

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They see the curves, the softened skin,

while something feral starves within.

It isn’t joy that fills me out,

it’s something bloated due to drought.

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A body built to hide a grave,

too far gone to try and save.

So let them bless the weight I wear,

their smiles— an illusion of care.

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They’ll never dig, they’ll never find.

Don’t care enough to look behind.

Though they surely see the subtle signs…

they’ll only see what soothes their minds.

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But something in me still resists,

A pulse that won’t fully desist.

Buried deep beneath the smoke—

A dying light inside the cloak.

.

Yet if all of me were truly gone,

this flesh would not keep holding on.

Not yet healed and far from whole,

something precious here won’t let me go.

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Like this piece? You might love my short essay piece called, “Melancholy-Contemplative Baseline.”

Click here to check it out.

“Some people live in direct sunlight; others have deep ancestral roots in faraway lands where the sun was mostly shrouded by fog and misty sea spray.

This is an essay about existing within a slower, deeper, more velvety frequency which shapes how I see and create.

It’s for anyone who has ever felt “too contemplative” for this loud world, and is learning that depth isn’t a flaw – it’s a form of love and survival.”

• • •

Click to visit my home page — find this image to follow my writing. 🖤 ⬆️

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