The Night She Slept Under the Stars

Riya sat on the cold marble floor of her balcony, hugging her knees to her chest. The city was alive with a thousand fluorescent lights blinking in glass towers, but her tiny rented apartment felt like a silent tomb. Her phone lay beside her, screen cracked, displaying the last message from her ex: “You’re too much to handle.”

She let out a dry laugh. Too much to handle. Too much to love. Too much to keep. It was always the same – people admired her fire until it burned too bright for their comfort.

Inside, the untouched dinner sat on the table. The fan spun above, spreading stale air around the room. Her eyes burned with exhaustion. She was tired of overthinking. Tired of being labelled dramatic for feeling deeply. Tired of shrinking herself to fit into someone else’s idea of enough.

She checked the time. 11:47 PM. A thought entered her mind like a mischievous breeze. Without another second’s pause, she grabbed her thin bedsheet, her phone, and a bottle of water. She walked up two flights of stairs to the building’s rooftop. The door creaked open, revealing the night sky – a sprawling velvet canvas pinpricked with trembling stars.

She spread her bedsheet on the rough concrete and lay down, feeling the coarse ground beneath her spine. The air smelled of dust and faint jasmine from a neighbour’s balcony plant. Above, the stars twinkled cold and indifferent, yet somehow comforting. The moon shone half-hidden behind drifting clouds, casting silver light over her face.

A cool breeze blew across her bare arms, raising goosebumps on her skin. She closed her eyes, letting the night sounds soothe her – the distant rumble of trucks on the highway, a stray dog barking, the rhythmic whir of ceiling fans through windows left ajar. It wasn’t silent, but the chaos of the world below seemed far away.

For the first time in months, she felt grounded. She felt small, but in a peaceful way – like a tiny dot in a grand painting, significant just by existing. She let her breath slow, inhaling the coolness of the night, exhaling the heat of her anger and grief. In that moment, she wasn’t anyone’s daughter, employee, or ex-girlfriend. She was just Riya – a girl lying under a sky that didn’t care if she was too much.

She imagined herself as a child again, lying beside her father in their village courtyard, counting stars until sleep claimed her. Back then, happiness was simple: warm milk before bed, the smell of earth after rain, a hug that erased nightmares. She remembered her father pointing out constellations with his rough fingers, whispering legends of gods and warriors who lived among the stars.

A tear slipped down her temple into her hair. She didn’t wipe it away. The sky seemed too vast for her pain to matter, yet it also felt vast enough to hold it all without judgement.

She whispered softly, “Thank you,” to no one in particular – maybe to the stars, maybe to her own stubborn heart that refused to stop loving, despite how many times it cracked.

She thought of tomorrow – the emails waiting at work, her mother’s worried calls, her friend’s texts asking her to move on quickly. But tonight, she chose silence over answers. She chose the comfort of distant galaxies over forced positivity. She chose to lie under a sky that never tried to fix her, only to exist with her.

As she drifted to sleep under the silent constellations, she realised: ceilings may protect you, but they also cage you. Tonight, she chose freedom over comfort.

She woke up at dawn with dew on her eyelashes and the first rays of sunlight warming her chilled skin. The city was quiet, as if holding its breath before chaos began. She sat up, wrapped the damp sheet around her shoulders, and watched the horizon blush with morning light. Birds began chirping from hidden nests, and the breeze carried the faint scent of burning wood from a tea stall opening below.

Today, she thought, she would not apologise for being too much. The sky never apologises for being infinite.