Chakithaya (Cover) Lyrics by Nemesis

So that not even a shadow of you stays inside my heart,
you turned into an illusion. How did you wipe away my dreams?
So that not even a shadow of you stays inside my heart,
you turned into an illusion. How did you wipe away my dreams?

Is there not even a flicker left, has it all gone still?
How did the memory wither and die?

My heart burned.
I drowned in tears.
The light in my eyes went out.
I fell into darkness.
Oh, the burning world went dark.
The dream you built has shattered.

So that not even a single tear stays in my eyes,
so that my world keeps burning and never cools again.
So that not even a single tear stays in my eyes,
so that my world keeps burning and never cools again.

Is there not even a flicker left, has it all gone still?
How did the memory wither and die?

My heart burned.
I drowned in tears.
The light in my eyes went out.
I fell into darkness.
Oh, the burning world went dark.
The dream you built has shattered.

Our world lasted only a moment.
Even though we flew that day like butterflies,
your fleeting feelings
are what burned me.
It has all become an illusion. I will not be bound to it again.
It has all become an illusion. I will not be bound to it again.

My heart burned.
I drowned in tears.
The light in my eyes went out.
I fell into darkness.
Oh, the burning world went dark.
The dream you built has shattered.

A young man is trying to scrub someone he loved out of himself completely, right down to the last trace. He does not want a single shadow of her left in his heart, not one tear left in his eyes. That is where the song sits, in the raw stretch right after a breakup, when the hurt is so sharp that the only thing that feels survivable is to feel nothing at all. He keeps asking how it happened. How did the love turn out to be an illusion? How did the memory just wither and die?

The song moves through that pain in short, hammering lines, which suits a rock cover like this one. The heart burns, the tears rise until he is drowning in them, the light goes out of his eyes, and everything tips into darkness. Then comes the line that holds the whole song: “the dream you built has shattered.” She is the one who made the dream, who promised the future, and now it lies in pieces and he is the one left standing in the wreckage.

Two images carry the feeling. One is fire. He says he wants his world to keep burning and never cool again, which sounds strange until you realise he means it as punishment and as proof, better to let the pain burn forever than to pretend it never mattered. The other is the butterfly. In the last verse he remembers how, for one short moment, the two of them flew together like butterflies, light and free and beautiful. But a butterfly’s flight lasts no time at all, and that is exactly the point. Their whole world lasted only a moment, and her feelings turned out to be as fleeting as that flight. The Sinhala word for those feelings, “chapala,” means fickle, unsteady, here one second and gone the next.

By the end he has made his choice. It was all an illusion, “maaya,” and he will not let himself be bound to it again. There is no comfort offered and none asked for. What you are left holding is the sound of someone deciding that the only way to live with this much love gone wrong is to burn it all down and walk away clean.