Lost Girls

(Annie, oh Annie)
Train ride up… carrying weight in our hands
Not just the box… but the shape of some plans
Scrap-built tower… parts we'd compiled
Held it like something… more than a file
Oxford air… first breath of that place
Science park racks… quiet, clinical space
Set it in… stepped back, let it run
Supernova… yeah, our first real one
Spray-painted black… silver flecks in the grain
Like a night sky caught… in a steel frame
Static IP… felt like we'd arrived
Then you walked in… and something rewired
All of that code… just fell out of view
Whole city shifted… the moment I knew (Annie)

Letters came slow… ink pressed in the page
Sellotape corners… holding an age
Photos and scraps… little glimpses of you
Four letters in… and it already felt true
Phone calls… quiet… you'd pick up, just breathe
Soft little silence… hanging with me
We let it build… didn't force what it was
Now you're laughter… louder than us
From a whisper… to light in a room
Watched you find space… watched you bloom
I still think back… yeah I still believe
I helped you see… what you could be

Two lost girls… drifting out of view
Bright, bright minds… but the dark came through
Reaching for stars… just out of frame
Now nothing here… really feels the same
I still hear your voice… in the quiet room
Soft echoes living… in the empty gloom
Two lost girls… you're not fully gone
You're in every word… that I'm holding on

You'd ask me… what even counts as a mind?
Where does it start… what defines?
Is information… something we hold?
Or patterns repeating… endlessly told
You'd drift off… past edges of thought
Where answers dissolve… and questions get caught
Could the universe run… like code in a loop?
Or are we just shadows… of something more true
You lived out there… where it bends and breaks
Where the line disappears… when the system shakes
That fine, fine edge… you walked it thin (Annie)
Where the light burns bright… but it pulls you in

Twenty-two… and the world just split
Found him there… and that was it
Something cracked… let the noise seep through
Turned every clear thought… into something untrue
Years like that… balancing the line
Half in brilliance… half outside time (oh Annie)
Then days after… you'd handed it in
The dark got louder… and it pulled you in

You were sunlight… bottled in skin
Every room shifted… soon as you'd step in
Never saw shadows… never saw strain
Just bright energy… running your veins
Then something small… something unseen
A bite… a shift… Lyme disease
Fog rolling in… where your future was clear
Like it just erased… everything here
Weeks before… in the long grass wide
Glyndebourne fields… summer in stride
Bare legs brushing… earth below
Laughing like life… was all you'd know
I didn't see it… I didn't understand
Now it's a weight… I still can't stand

Why's it that joy… led you there?
Open skies… unguarded air
"Galactic winds"… in the work you'd write
"Dark galaxies"… just out of sight
Paranal dreams… that desert sky
You were jumping… I remember why
I just wish that feeling… could've stayed
Kept you safe… kept the dark away
What did we lose… we'll never know
All the places… your mind would go
Feels like silence… where you should be
Like missing lines… in reality (oh Hayley)

Two lost girls… fading into blue
All that light… and I still feel you
In quiet moments… in things you said
In the way your thoughts… still fill my head
I still hear your voice… clear and true
Like it never left… like it pulled me through
Two lost girls… I carry you on
In every word… even now you're gone

("Two of my oldest, deepest friends, I miss them every day")