Ridena Noriddena

Poking at my cheeks in a way that hurts and doesn’t hurt,
why do you keep nudging me, my kiyambu vine (a slender flowering creeper, an old image for a graceful girl)?
Plans made in love are never only dreams,
a goddess takes shape, leaving her breath in my chest.
I catch fire.. and she cools.
She catches fire.. and I cool.

Feelings tickled awake on warm lips,
on a moonless night a hundred stars talked beside us,
hands never letting go, we stayed awake until dawn,
and in a sleepless river a warmth was born.
I catch fire.. and she cools.
She catches fire.. and I cool.

Her head on my shoulder, she says she loves me,
the pain flaring up in both her eyes.
I cool, she cools,
she cools, I cool……

A young man is being teased by the girl he loves, and the whole song grows out of that one small thing. She pokes his cheek, half playful and half rough, and he opens with a lovely contradiction: it hurts and it doesn’t hurt. That single line tells you everything about where they are. The sting is part of the sweetness, and he would not trade it.

He calls her a kiyambu vine, a slender creeper that climbs and flowers. In Sinhala verse a vine is the standing image for a girl who is graceful and delicate, but a vine also holds on to whatever it grows around, and that second meaning is doing quiet work here. Then he says the plans two people make in love are never only dreams, because she has already taken shape inside him like a goddess who left her breath in his chest. He is not waiting for the relationship to become real. It is breathing in him.

The refrain is the heart of it. He burns and she cools, then she burns and he cools. Fire and cooling are old Sinhala images for desire and peace, and the lyric turns them into a rhythm the two of them keep between them. When one of them is worked up, the other steadies things, and a moment later they trade places. That is what makes it feel like love rather than only wanting.

The second verse gives you the night itself. A moonless sky, which should be dark and empty, is instead full of stars that seem to be talking right next to them. Their hands do not come apart and they stay awake until morning. A sleepless river carries the warmth that comes out of that night, water and heat held together, the same pairing as the fire and the cooling.

The last verse turns. She rests her head on his shoulder and says she loves him, and the pain is burning in her eyes as she says it. Something is hurting her, and the song does not explain what. It just answers it. The refrain drops the burning altogether and both of them cool at the same time, over and over. The song ends with nobody left alight on their own, and that quiet is what it was reaching for the whole way through.