He Said the Stars Were Mine, So I Lit the Sky on Fire

By- AK

STORY:

He said the stars were mine.
Every single one.
He said it on the roof of his broken-down Chevy, hands laced behind his head, breath fogging into the cool August air like he was exhaling dreams. His voice was steady, almost too steady, like he’d practiced the line in the mirror a few times. I should’ve known then.

“You see that cluster?” he pointed, “That’s Andromeda. Yours. And that one—Orion—he’ll guard you when I can’t.”

He was full of poetry like that. Big words, small actions. Grand gestures, forgotten birthdays. But back then, I didn’t care. I was seventeen and willing to believe that stardust could be currency. That if someone gave you the sky, they wouldn’t take it back when the weather changed.

For the first few months, it felt like magic. We made a list of all the places we’d go. Printed it. Laminated it. Stuck it in his glove compartment like a sacred relic. We’d drive nowhere with the windows down, screaming songs into the wind and kissing at red lights. He wrote my name on the fogged-up window once. It stayed there for days until it rained.

I still remember how it looked—the way the letters blurred as the water ran down the glass.


---

He changed slowly, like most people do.
First, the texts got shorter.
Then, the calls got quieter.
And one day, his eyes stopped following me in a room.

I asked if something was wrong. He said, “You’re too much.”
I laughed like it was a joke. It wasn’t.
“You talk about everything like it matters,” he added. “It’s exhausting.”

Funny thing is, that used to be what he loved most. The way I lit up about galaxies, or the way I noticed patterns in the way people spoke or carried sadness in their shoes. But somewhere along the way, he stopped finding it charming and started finding it inconvenient.

He didn’t say goodbye. He just… stopped showing up.


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Two months later, I saw him under those same stars.
With someone else.
Different laugh. Different lips. Same constellation promises.

I stood across the parking lot, clutching a milkshake I’d bought myself after a solo drive to clear my head. My hands were shaking. Not from anger, not even from heartbreak—but from realization.

He never gave me the stars.
He just knew I wanted them.


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So I did what any heartbroken girl with a fire inside her would do.
I took them back.

Not literally, of course. I’m not a goddess—though I started acting like one after that night. I meant spiritually. Metaphorically. Emotionally. Cosmically.

I lit the sky on fire.

I started showing up to the places I used to avoid. Wore red lipstick even on Tuesdays. Took road trips alone, played my music louder, danced in diners with no shame. I unfollowed him, un-tagged myself from our memories, and unlearned every lie he wrapped in stardust.

I wrote letters to the constellations. Not to him—never to him—but to the parts of myself I left behind in his orbit.

And slowly, they started writing back.


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One night, I climbed the hill behind my house with a blanket and a notebook. The same one I’d once used to write love poems about him. I crossed them out. Page by page. Then I started a new list—not places I wanted to go with him, but places I wanted to go alone. Or with someone who saw all of me and stayed anyway.

The sky was still there, waiting. Orion still stood tall. Andromeda still shimmered. The stars didn’t belong to him. They never had.

They belonged to anyone brave enough to look up and claim them.


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Here’s what they don’t tell you about heartbreak:
It doesn’t kill you.
It makes you louder.
Bolder.
Hungrier.

It teaches you to set your own fires instead of waiting for someone else to hand you a match.

I started painting again. Not pretty watercolors like before, but chaotic, cosmic canvases. Deep blacks and violent blues. Gold-leaf galaxies. Suns colliding. My bedroom turned into a universe, and every wall held a piece of me.

When people asked what inspired it, I just smiled and said, “A boy once gave me the stars. I gave myself the galaxy.”


---

Now, when I lie under the sky, I don’t think of him.
I think of how I mistook crumbs for constellations.
How I confused poetry for presence.
And how beautiful it felt the moment I stopped asking for space and started taking it.

So if you ever find yourself on the receiving end of a promise wrapped in stars, take a second.
Ask yourself:
Is it a gift—or a leash?

Because the right person won’t give you the sky as a distraction.
They’ll sit beside you while you build your own.
And when you’re done, they’ll point to the brightest one and say,
“That one’s yours—and no one can ever take it away.”