Your hands tanned from daily runs, 

soft from reading books but for 

calloused tips you use for guitar picks,

notes and time signatures in your knuckles;

you sing in strings

with a vibrato I barely understand.

You're exotic as the place I used to call

"home"--twenty-four hundred miles away,

once familiar, changing while I'm not there

even if I resist.

You set down the guitar and dig at your nails

--the anxious habit I recognize--

I want to reach across and still your hands

and ask, "What's wrong?"

I used to know the answer to this.