Kusumata Lan Wee Lyrics by Chandralekha Perera

You came close to the flower to gather its nectar

The bee flew far away
Swaying there in the gentle breeze
I am a flower left all alone

Wings to fly away
I have none, the way you do
Maybe one day you will come back again
Don’t find joy in hurting me

In the rays of tomorrow’s rising sun
I will open up and bloom again
If you come to meet me once more
I will bud and blossom again

A young woman sings this as a flower left behind. She gave herself to someone the way a flower offers its nectar, and once he had what he came for, he flew off and left her. The whole song lives inside that one image, and it carries a quiet, wounded kind of love.

In Sinhala song the bee and the flower are a familiar pair for a man and the woman he courts. The bee (bambara) moves freely from bloom to bloom, takes the nectar it wants, and flies on. The flower stays rooted where it is, swaying in the breeze with no way to follow. So when she says she has no wings to fly like him, she is naming exactly how it feels to be the one who cannot leave, the one who waits while the other is already gone. There is a soft accusation in it too, a plea not to take pleasure in the hurt he has caused.

What lifts the song above plain heartbreak is how it ends. She turns to tomorrow’s sun and says that in its light she will open and bloom again. A flower closes at night and opens with the morning, and she holds on to that. If he ever comes back to her, she promises, she will bud and blossom once more. It is not bitterness she is left with but a stubborn, gentle hope, the belief that she can still come back to life if he returns, the way a flower waits for the sun.