It was a purge. My rib cage became like an old cabinet in the formal dining room, holding old treasures and souvenirs, dust and cobwebs, antique mementos of abandoned traditions. I kept pieces of these old loves buried in here, unable to let them go. These pieces were small and easily forgotten but indestructible; no matter which way I moved, they wouldn't come loose. They rattled around each other and around each lung, competing for primacy. Sometimes I forgot they were even there, they waited so quietly, so discreetly, only to jump around and grow, loud and eager, at the smallest whisper of a second chance.
And I was granted a second chance.
And these pieces, they multiplied over each other, grew to their old sizes, filling my chest until I craved a bursting akin to fireworks. My lungs - breathing was painful. My heart - beating was painful. My spine - bending was painful. The pieces filled everything I had until I wanted nothing but this love, out in the open, out of me.
I know, now, why we don't hear about third chances, why that phrase feels foreign and clunky in my mouth. Because failing twice kills everything.
These loves, they grew to their old sizes and kept going, feeding on the lightness of hope and happiness. Each of them, each time, was the same creature as before, but somehow new and nubile; they twisted in new and exciting ways but still spoke the same familiar language. They felt like coming home, like everything turned right, like winning.
But they were not new. While these loves shined brighter and more hopeful, confident in their conquests of the past, the roots were the same and soon all of it faded to its former skin: jealous, clingy, phobic, bored.
Like last time when the loves left, the pieces inside of me withered, shrinking into gnarled and dulled pieces. But this time, the pieces crumbled to dust.
It was a purge. These pieces had hidden away, waiting for a second chance at daylight, at the present, at life, and they had gotten it only to be told, yet again, that it wasn't real. That love can't feed on good wishes and sweet dreams. That love alone cannot sustain. And without anything of real nourishment, the pieces broke and disappeared, exhaled on the wind, leaving my rib cage home to only that which I was born with - no stowaways, no thieves, no abandoned hopes or promises.
I've purged myself of all of you. Now I am clean and empty and ready to be filled with something new, something promising, something unafraid.
I'm actually ready this time.