In Santa Monica she held

a string of beads to her throat

and I told her the blue

matched her eyes and the green

her tattoo, that dragon etched

into her foot. Years later,

she wrote me long letters

on cream paper in seasoned ink

telling of temptations,

her pain, and of its escape.

When I asked her to come home,

when I tried to persuade

the gold-craggy coast out

of her, she only said

New Jersey had gone gray.

She left behind our bare

beaches for the sunlight

that bleached her blond hair,

and slept on someone's

rooftop for a month,

her face brightened

by windburn not sunshine.

But she was steadfast

about never coming back

to the winters she left

behind, and now that things

have gone bad again, I can't reach

across the broken-bottle blackness

between us to bring

her home. California

is no place for her to settle

down, the bluest water

still deep enough to drown in.