Ra Thisse Awilla Lyrics by Romesh and Lakshan

The whole night caught fire, the dying embers flared again
You came, and you nudged my heart awake
Close as my own life, you wander through my heart
You unsettled me, you troubled me, like petals scattered around

Ah, love filled me, spread right through my mind
Don’t speak of this sweet dream out loud
I can’t stand to be alone, how far is life without you
I can’t bear to leave you, this love is so sweet
I can’t even hold myself together, has love come into my life
Could I ever bear to lose you
My love…

Love doesn’t say so much
my words are too poor for it
The dream isn’t seen so plainly
my eyes are too blind for it
I can’t stay quiet either
like a wave of love
flowing like a river, I can’t bear to lose you
My love…

Because my heart had stayed locked shut
you came and broke down the doors and windows
Because in my life it is only you
you tied up my heart… I can’t bear to lose you…

The whole night caught fire, the dying embers flared again
You came, and you nudged my heart awake

The whole night caught fire, the dying embers flared again
You came, and you nudged my heart awake

Close as my own life, you wander through my heart
You unsettled me, you troubled me, like petals scattered around

The whole night caught fire, the dying embers flared again
You came, and you nudged my heart awake

Close as my own life, you wander through my heart
You unsettled me, you troubled me, like petals scattered around

A young man’s heart had gone quiet and cold, shut up like a house with the doors bolted, until one person walked in and changed everything. That is where this song lives. He sings to her directly, half in wonder, telling her what her arrival did to a heart he thought was done feeling.

The opening image carries the whole song. He says the night caught fire and the dying embers flared up again. In Sinhala love songs a banked fire that suddenly glows is the picture of feeling that had grown cold coming back to life, so when he says she nudged his heart and it caught light, he means she woke something in him he had stopped expecting. From there the comparisons keep circling the same idea. She is close as his own breath, she wanders freely through his heart, she scatters him the way petals get tossed about. None of these are calm pictures. He is happily undone, restless, unable to sleep or sit still or hold himself together, and he keeps saying he simply cannot bear the thought of losing her.

The middle verse is the most touching turn, because here he admits he can’t put any of it into words. His speech is too poor, he says, his eyes too blind to even see the dream clearly. It is the old feeling that real love is bigger than the language you have for it. And yet he can’t stay silent, so the feeling spills out of him on its own, rising like a wave and flowing like a river. The river is the key image: in Sinhala song a river stands for something that cannot be held back or turned around, water that has to keep moving toward the sea. His love has that same helpless, one-way pull.

By the last verse he names plainly what happened. His heart had been locked, and she came and broke down the doors and windows to get in. There is no resentment in that, only gratitude, because the alternative was staying shut and cold forever. What the listener is left holding is that simple, grateful ache of someone who had given up on feeling this way and then did, the relief and the fear of it tangled together in one line he keeps returning to: I can’t bear to lose you, my love.