Songfacts®:

• Boh Runga said this song is about "living without someone who was a big part of your world and how the memory of them can creep in even when you make a conscientious effort to forget about them. Doing the every day can take you back to times shared when that someone was there to do the every day with you." "Starfish Sleeping" is, she said, "a reluctant admission to missing someone."
  
  The starfish is actually a sleeping position, lying on one's back with both arms up and around the pillow. If Miss Runga is sleeping in this position there is an obvious inference about her relationship with the person who she is missing, but to say more than that would be tactless, to put it mildly. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander Baron - London, England