Betony stopped writing poetry when she was eighteen. It was the summer her mom took her to London on one of her location-scouting trips. She'd had a day off, so they decided to go to the Tate Gallery because it was free and right near the Thames. Betony remembered walking up the great stone steps and through the threshold, and stopping at the huge plastic donation bin at the front with all the different coins and bills from all over the world, thinking that maybe she'd bump into some random almost-art-lover like herself.
She remembered walking through the rooms, nineteenth century portraits of no one in particular in one room, a twentieth century installation about the drug culture and overpopulation in another, and the distinct feeling that she didn't really belong anywhere and that everything was her fault slowly overcame her. This despite the fact that her mother, who never really made her feel guilty because of what she did but merely by association sometimes, was next to her, quietly observing everything.
The air smelled a mix of moldy books and tinny air conditioning, and although it was cold in the entire building Betony kept reminding herself that she was in the midst of greatness. Blake, Waterhouse, Millais, they all painted, or sketched, or carved their lives out onto the canvas, and now they were hung on the wall, over a poker table green background, with carpet or a quasi-classical looking mosaic of people and angels on the floor. Betony wondered if the cheap little halogen lights actually made the paints melt when people weren't looking; she could've sworn that painting with Persephone was sweating, that the pomegranate was dripping in her hand.
Still, her mom didn't say a word; she just pointed and maybe moaned in some kind of pedestrian ecstasy, thinking that this was the end of the art world even though she knew better. California spoils people like that, Betony thought. Making people believe that Los Angeles is the end-all be-all of the world. The gallery isn't where you get big in our time. No matter how realistic you think your painting is, all it will get you there are some cool pop culture comic book covers.
She sat down on a bench, and her mother finally spoke. "Are you tired?"
"Not really. I just don't want to walk around anymore."
"You want to go?"
"No, I like it here. I just want to sit."
Her mom smiled. "Okay. I'm going to do some more walking around."
"That's cool. I'll find you. Or you'll find me, or..." her mother kissed her on the cheek and disappeared around the corner.
Betony looked around at the room, and noticed there were actually a lot of people around, but they didn't stay in one place all too long. The wooden benches were just too much for people to just sit and stare at things.
She looked up and Waterhouse's The Lady of Shalott seemed to take up her entire eyesight. She remembered it from a poster she had in her room back in California, and she smiled at seeing the detail of the original in front of her. Something about it, maybe because it was the real painting, made her want to just stare at it. The card tacked to the wall next to it said, "The power of this piece comes from The Lady's averted eyes from the crucifix nailed down in front of her," and something about a critic she didn't recognize. She never noticed the crucifix before, and now that it was brought to her attention, she realized how clear it was in the actual picture, and how stupid she was for not seeing it before. Now it took up all of her gaze.
She remembered reading the poem once, when she was sixteen and she'd been writing poetry for a year and wanted to learn some of the old styles of writing. She'd picked up a book of commonly anthologized poems and read through Alfred Lord Tennyson's rhythmic tale of love and death of the unnamed Lady in Camelot. She'd seen the poster the next year when she was idly flipping through a poster rack at an art store, remembered the poem, and picked it up. She never read the poem after that. But she'd liked the poster. For some reason, though, sitting there in front of it, all she could do was stare at it, and that's all she wanted to do.
The Lady's lips were open so slightly, as if the sigh that coming from them was only a poetic formality. Her auburn hair was shifting in the breeze, tickling her limp left hand in her lap while her right hand lazily loosed the chain from which her boat was held. Her woven tapestry of heroes and love was so large it hung over the side of the boat into the dark reflective water, entangling in the reeds sprouting from it. A candle at the head of the boat next to the crucifix looked as if it were just about to burn out, like The Lady's life was. A brass and glass lamp swung from the very front of the boat, as if the little candle inside could guide her to where she truly wanted to go-- Lancelot's arms. And in the background, beyond the river and the island, a piece of the fields of barley and rye that clothe the wold and meet the sky peeked from behind weeping willows and dark wooden trees that looked bare as if in the dead of winter. And her eyes, averted from the crucifix, from what looks like on the surface averting her eyes from Christ's love, but really she was averting her eyes from the inevitable end after the boat had completed its course down the river-- her death.
Betony could only look at the painting. And the poem came back to her, and she remembered when Jason had said he cared so much for her, and she remembered all those hate poems she wrote about him when they broke up. She remembered him saying that he wanted someone else. And she remembered how nobody wanted her in that way after that and now that she was graduated and going to UCLA things were going to change and writing bad poetry wasn't going to really make things any better. Every time she sat down to write, the poem never became what she wanted it, and it always seemed to be so far from the genius work that all the dead poets made. She felt like it was all futile, that it never seemed to be enough. But she knew that was okay because stranger things have happened and there was always that line in any poem that doesn't make any sense.
She closed her eyes, and breathed in the mold-tin cold air and thought she would never see Lancelot. And if she ever did, he wasn't the kind to want someone who weaves a tapestry about his life. It reminded Betony a little bit of that story she started after Jason left her. She thought it wasn't really autobiographical, but in actuality it was the same exact story except she changed the names to protect the innocent. Since then she made up stories about boys she saw at school, boys whose names she didn't even know, boys of jock persuasion and geek persuasion and Goth persuasion and effeminate persuasion, of fat and skinny and tall and short persuasion; and she would write stories about them falling in love with her, or her falling in love with them, and how it all ended up with someone never quite getting what they wanted. Like The Lady never really got what she wanted because the curse made it all impossible. When Betony opened her eyes again, she swore she could see The Lady's chest rise and fall in that eternal sigh of her relent to death.
But Betony knew she was only being poetic for the sake of the art around her. She realized that the only good poetry she could write was poetry in her head. Verses would not make the knight come for her. She knew that. And yet she liked to play the melodrama out just for the sake of feeling something. Hurt for hurt's sake. She still wished for someone to just say they loved her out of the blue, for some complete stranger to sit next to her at this voluptuous painting and say, "You don't know me, but I think I've fallen in love with you," and they'd kiss on Blackfriar's Bridge at midnight.
All poetry, all drama. There was a part of her that was sick of it, that it was high time a boy walked into her life and said all these nice things to her about herself. But she knew. She knew the pain wasn't a nice thing, and no boy would ever want to talk to her about it. And even if she did stop writing poetry, that wouldn't mean that she still wouldn't act like she did.