The Cipher

This latest book of Molly’s poetry hints and sometimes shouts at the darkness so layered within her inner life. She weaves her mysterious words out of threads of natural history, longing and loss. Always questioning self, other world.In Mount Yonah she replies to the demon “I tried, I tried, I used all of myself, all of the self given to me, all of it”. Molly was too hard on herself, judging. In Good at It, which is one of the best poems she saysI am not good at the truth.It doesn’telate melike it doesgood people.PeaceIs making space for everything:Pine boards, afternoon, deceit.Go about a little emptyAnd you will be good at it.Molly may not have been thinking of her oh to soon death by suicide when she wrote these poems but throughout there is so much darkness, she used the word black 10 times, she writes of rotten roses, of God, demons, death until I could just cry. For, as her mother, I have done a lot of crying in the seven and a half months since her death.These poems are such a wispy reflection of a deeply beautiful and complicated woman.