My Little Bird

Chapter 1

May 17th, 2015

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"

These familiar words caressed me as I looked at my husband's corpse lying lifelessly on the living room floor.

Edgar Allen Poe was a incomprehensibly intelligent man labeled as a freak that should have been thrown in the loony bin. Asher always knew that Poe was a genius. Poe's intelligence and more robust way of thinking cause him to be considered to be a madman. Those who uncover the facts that average people are too scared to acknowledge, and bring them to life, are viewed as insane, depressing, crazy, weird; the list goes on and on.

Asher's favorite historical figure in literature was none other than the 'madman' himself. Asher didn't study and analyze Poe like a child would poke and prod at a dead worm, wondering what was inside; what exactly made it tick, looking at it as a science experiment. Asher knew Poe was just like many other agreed upon geniuses like Einstein or Tesla. However, Poe was different. He didn't shy away from death like many others. In fact, he embraced it with open arms; inviting the cold fingers of afterlife to wrap themselves around many of the plots of his works. Poe looked at things with an open mind, expressing himself in ways unusual to most. That is why Asher adored him.

I've heard many of Poe's stories, poems, and quotes on a daily basis. I never understood that one quite as well as I do now, though.

Poe describes life and death to be of the same nature and I always thought that was quite untrue, as I never experienced the lowest moment when life and death indistinguishably meet, leaving me to wonder if I'm half alive or if I'm half dead. Contemplating whether my glass was half full or half empty as I feel as though I already have one foot in the grave. Never have I felt like this; like I was numb, cold, emotionless, immovable-- dead.

The only way I can describe this feeling is this:

As soon as you pick a flower, permanently plucking it from its roots, its life source, that flower starts to wilt. Not instantly, of course, but slowly. First, the petals will start to lose water, desperately hanging onto the little that it has left, curling in on themselves and becoming fragile and limp. The flower's stiffness, its durability and toughness will seem to have never been a possible characteristic of itself, completely lacking self-support. For a while, the flower will remain like this; weak but still hanging on. As life around the flower moves on, it becomes overwhelming, sucking the last bit of life that the poor flower has left. The soggy, feeble organism begins to turn brittle, its petals losing the will to hang on; a few, but not all, detaching and falling away.

Asher was the roots and I was the flower. He gave me life. With him, I was almost invincible. I was healthy, happy, and lively. But without Asher, I was that sad, languishing flower, barely able to acknowledge the world around it.

A part of me shriveled up and died with Asher.

It's about a week or so after Asher's death now and I still hadn't snapped back into 'the real world' as many told me I would. There was just too much to ignore. Flashes of Addilyn and Emerson played through my head on an infinite loop; Emerson waddling towards her daddy with out stretched arms and Addilyn, a bit older and able to sense something wasn't quite right, pulling her little sister back. The sound of your little girl's voice asking,

"Mommy, what's wrong with Daddy? Mommy, why are you crying?"

echoing in your ears endlessly for days seems to intoxicate you, clouding your train of thought and keeping you drowning in a pool of incoherence.

I watched my husband die and my little girls found him dead because of my inability to react. I scarred my babies for life because I was too stupid to stop it from happening. Guilt, grief, anger, depression, fear, and practically every emotion known to man float around inside of me like pollen floats through the air; aimlessly and uncontrollably.

Addilyn and Emerson have been at my mom's for a week now. I miss them horribly but I'm scared that if I look at them, all I'll see is Asher. Addilyn has my eyes but Asher's crooked smile and button nose. Addilyn definitely looks more like Asher than she looks like me. Emerson, on the other hand, is my mini me. She has uncontrollable, wavy, frizzy, dirty blonde hair, my nose, and defined philtrum. I know it's not fair to Addilyn and Emerson to be separated for me for so long but as soon as I get my shit together, I'll take them back. I wouldn't be able to stand much more time away from them anyway.

My girls haven't seen me since the funeral, which took place on Wednesday. They were too young to sit there and go through the whole devastating process, but I had my mom take them by the church so I could see them for a bit before she dropped them off at a daycare for the duration of the funeral.

I don't remember much about the funeral except constant tears keeping my cheeks moist and my desire to chuck a bible at the priest that lead the service. He didn't exactly do anything wrong, I was just generally pissed off at the world and desperately wanted him to shut up. Hearing Asher's name and death in the same sentence rattled my brain so much that I could barely remember breathe without reminding myself every few seconds.

The funeral, as well as the wake, having taken place on Tuesday, was a closed casket service. Just as every funeral and wake is. That was the law. No one, no matter what, could request an open casket service, nor could they request that their love one be cremated. This wasn't always the case, though. A few generations back, about when my great grandma was born, this law was implemented. This was just a few years after the first known person to have their Phrase on their left wrist was known to be born. Although there is no correlation between the two events, there are many theorists who detect some sort of connection. I, on the other hand, just plainly abide by the law. The less you ask questions, the easier life is.

Although it would be easier to just ignore every question that pops in my mind, I find it incredibly hard to rid one specific inquiry; Why did I have Asher's last words, revealing him as my Soulmate, but he had nothing but a blank space? He was my Soulmate but I wasn't his. Did he not love me? Was it a mistake?