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.
