Eight forty-five, again. I close my eyes, feeling the intermittent pulsating of the veins in my feet, throbbing to the tick-tock of the clock on the wall. The room is too noisy, it is the clock, or maybe the remaining silence is stretched too thin. It has been months since I last wrote joy on the fast-forming lines on my face. My belly bulging reaches high, I imagine in a few more months it will touch the ceiling. Unopened boxes of clothes and utensils create an unplanned maze along the floor. ‘Unplanned’, funny word, isn’t it? You plan every step of your life and you are a try-hard who cannot have fun for once. Unplanned is just another word for spontaneity when it goes the way you want, but what of it when it doesn’t?

It’s nine pm. The lights go out, the orange behind my shut eyelids turn dark. I can hear my blood rush; I wonder if blood flow corrodes the heart like rivers corrode stones. Did you know almost ten percent of a heart is replaced each year? There is a literal change of heart. The only cells that do not regenerate are that of a brain – they are not kidding when they tell you think with your head not your heart. I open my eyes slowly, there is a single lone star on my ceiling, shining merrily. It’s one of those glow-in-the-dark vinyl stickers for kids. The landlord must have missed one and painted a coat of whitewash over it. I wonder if the star feels lonely.

Ten pm rolls in. I stares at my new friend; I imagine a happy family laying in the same bed. Tickling their new-born as her giggles echo through the room. They wouldn’t have had boxes lying around, instead the room would smell like baby formula and Dettol. When the lights go out, the baby looks up at a sky full of stars. But the landlord’s voice tears through my happy dream, the previous tenants had a miscarriage and within a week they had separated, the father walked away and the mother left soon after. The starry sky had been an aching reminder of what they had lost.

I pry open one of the cardboard boxes and rummage through, throwing clothes around haphazardly. And then I find it, my very own box of vinyl stars. I had bought it the same day the stick had turned pink in the convenience store bathroom. I hopped on the bed, my feet sinking into the mattress as I stood on my tiptoes. I stuck each sticker carefully, by the end I was breathing hard. I laid back again, the lone star was now dull in comparison but it was not lonely anymore. It was eleven now, I closed my eyes and let sleep take over me. The Milky Way watched over my sleeping form.