The Song We Claimed as Ours

I heard this song once more when it was played aloud by my father. It was the background music in the film coverage of the renewal of vows ceremony of one of his photography friends. This friend of his had been good to us, so me and my mom had been watching attentively.

I greatly admired the composition of the video, its color-grading, and so on. Even as the song played, I found it greatly suitable to the sophisticated atmosphere that pervaded the intricate wedding.

To say “I wished it had been our wedding” would be a lie. For I simply just walked away once it registered to me that they were using our song.

Yes. For me, that song is still ours.

I never really laid claim to any song before I met you, though I hadn’t been the one to say this one is ours. It was you who said, “I thought I would never fall in love again until I found you.”

That statement, I took it seriously. Who wouldn’t?

Though, in hindsight, it was shallow — the way you said it.

I had been wrong to fail to realize early that you said the same thing to your ex. And then again, you said the same thing to your current beau — the one whom I suspect had been your mistress all along.

She was there when we broke up. And she was there when we were still together. Perhaps, she was the ‘one’ who complained about being treated as an ‘option’ when according to you everyone starts as one, back when we were still just talking.

I stopped typing, realizing something. For a while, I lamented over the fact that in this song, which used to be ours, only stories of people who are not us can be told.

Is this song still ours? I ask.

Or had once the love faded, even the memory of the excitement from being memorialized in the sweet, sweet melody of a love song faded with it?

I can never really know. Though, I doubt it.

Because whenever I hear the song, I still know it is ours. And since I had long let go of everything related to you, I had long grown to dislike it.

Such a simple and innocent song ruined in distaste. Very much like what you did to me.