Cailyn Wolberg: 'Asking Too Little'

All contributors of the Serein Lark Review are interviewed for our blog.

You can read Wolberg's interview here!

Love stories exist in abundance, with a thousand tropes and points of view that repeat again and again. In Cailyn Wolberg's 'Asking Too Little' we get a quick glimpse into a love that feels fresh and real, told in close and honest words. I relish her voice, her every sentence. They pull me in and keep me under, wanting more, like they were a drug. Is that not love? Those who know love fondly may find Cailyn's thoughts especially evocative.

I wish someone would ask me something about you other than how you’re doing. Anything I truly want to tell would be a non-sequitur. 

The talkshow host in my head asks better questions. They’re personal, specific. Always about you. He lets me offer a real response, rambling on as is natural. The audience applauds at the end. 

Today’s question is so vague that I’m caught off guard. He tests me, asking how it feels to be with someone like you. 

I chuckle. He joins in. The amusement compounds and escalates. We laugh so hard we’re sweating, we choke on our own spit. Our feet kick and bang the floor, all over the ridiculous implication that there could possibly be another person like you.  

Outside the show, I’m limited. Nobody cares what we say to each other before bed. Based on our trip to Spain, I figure we have another forty-eight years until anyone might care. Remember the couple in our tour group celebrating their anniversary? That woman finally won the floor when she called him, earnestly, after fifty years, without a trace of boomer-joke sarcasm, the light of her life. She apparently reminds him every night. 

If I say the same about you, it’s called the ‘Honeymoon Phase,’ and the subject passes. But she could have talked about the sweet mole behind his left knee, and we all would have listened. It’s a right earned only with time. 

By the time our turn comes, I’ll be ready, armed with a list of your intricacies. Maybe I’ll mention your socks, the striped pair you once showed me to exemplify your favorite color. The exact shade is hard to find, you said. I found it only once, pointing it out in a tidepool, a patch of nature designed to your liking. If only I could have crafted it for you. 

If only someone would ask me about that. 

The End.