“Molly Blue” is a lyric narrative blending confessional poetry with ballad-like repetition and elegiac tone. Its central theme is the burden of bearing another’s trauma and painful secrets. The voice is a first-person listener and confidant, someone to whom Molly has “sworn” her secrets. The speaker oscillates between tender witness, helpless chronicler, and mourner. Structurally, the poem shifts between rhythmic quatrains and shorter refrain lines. The repetition creates an incantatory effect. The final stanza introduces unresolved mystery, suggesting that some wounds resist articulation, even by the one who lived them. The imagery grounds the ethereal pain in physical, almost noir detail. This poem was written for the novella “A Shattered Cup of Doom,” and being newly produced, it has not yet been assigned to a chapbook.
“MOLLY BLUE”
molly swore me to her secrets
i guess to test, but nonetheless
i hear her
and getting something off her chest
a haze of menthol cigarettes
i hear her
molly told me that september
she so young, she can’t remember
how once upon a time, forever
to other arms, her soul surrendered
what, by god, in moonlight shown
cleavered clean from all she’d known
abandoned, set adrift, alone
what, by god, in moonlight shown
i know because she told me so
the numbers, names, her every tear
i could write a book about
the things she wanted me to hear
molly, molly, child estranged
the darkness of that night remains
what wind aloft might drive the rain
even she, herself can’t say
Copyright © 2026 Robert Myrnyj | All rights reserved.
The poems and literary works presented here are original creations by the author.
Unauthorized copying, reproduction, distribution, modification, or public display of this
content is strictly prohibited without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.