[Verse 1]
She carries the tide in the quiet of her chest,
A Cancer soul who gives her softest and her best,
The world sees the stillness, the steady and the sure,
But underneath the surface runs something deep and pure,
She's built her life like shelter, like a hand-hewn door,
Always holding space for others, asking nothing more

[PreChorus]
But the one she's never sheltered is the one who needs it most,
The woman in the mirror she keeps passing like a ghost

[Chorus]
Shirley, the stars wrote your name in the deep,
You're the ocean and the anchor, the vigil and the sleep,
Shirley, you were never meant to earn your place here,
You were always, always enough, let that much be clear

[Verse 2]
She measures every word before it meets the air,
A mind that won't stop turning, a heart that won't stop caring,
She's held the weight of family like a lantern in the rain,
Turned every quiet sorrow into something that sustains,
They call it being steady, call it grace under fire,
She just calls it Tuesday, keeps the flame a little higher

[PreChorus]
But steady doesn't mean she doesn't stumble in the dark,
Strength was never absence of the ache inside her heart

[Chorus]
Shirley, the stars wrote your name in the deep,
You're the ocean and the anchor, the vigil and the sleep,
Shirley, you were never meant to earn your place here,
You were always, always enough, let that much be clear

[Verse 3]
She loves like something rooted, like a river that remembers,
Faithful through the summers and the cold of gray Decembers,
She's asked herself a thousand times if what she gives comes back,
Learning now the giving was never what she lacked,
A healer who forgot to lay her own hands on the wound,
But the light inside her hasn't faded, it's resumed

[PreChorus]
The cosmos didn't make her to be small and yet unseen,
She was written for the wholeness found in everything between

[Chorus]
Shirley, the stars wrote your name in the deep,
You're the ocean and the anchor, the vigil and the sleep,
Shirley, you were never meant to earn your place here,
You were always, always enough, let that much be clear

[Bridge]
Let the roots hold what the branches couldn't carry,
Let the moon pull what the daylight made feel heavy,
Every scar she wore became a kind of coming home,
She was never once forgotten, never truly alone

[Outro]
Shirley, rest now in the truth the sky has kept,
You are loved the way the earth loves every quiet breath,
The stars have always known you, and they always will,
You are whole, you are held, you are enough still