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

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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

carried on my hips and face

as if it came from brighter days.

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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.

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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.

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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.”

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

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