"Every Brew"
(Or: "Bantayan Blue")
(Or: "Bantayan Blue")
It was a revision of the poem originally entitled “Of Colours That Linger over Coffee,” reworked in a moment of late-hour boredom when time felt elastic and the room was lit more by mood than by necessity. What began casually—almost absent-mindedly—slowly slipped into something more deliberate, as if the words were being rearranged to the hum of an old cassette deck left running in the background.
As the revision took shape, the poem began to feel accompanied by an ’80s lounge-pop / soft jazz atmosphere—warm synth pads, brushed drums, a bassline that never rushes, the kind of music that plays in the background of neon-lit cafés or seaside hotels just after sunset. There’s a quiet nostalgia to it, a sense of looking out through tinted glass at something already passing, where sweetness is restrained and longing is carried in understatement rather than confession.
This version leans into texture and tone—colors, cooling coffee, drifting air—allowing them to echo like a familiar melody you can’t quite place. It lingers the way an old song does on late-night radio: not loud enough to demand attention, not soft enough to disappear, content to exist in that suspended space where memory, mood, and distance gently blur into one.
As the revision took shape, the poem began to feel accompanied by an ’80s lounge-pop / soft jazz atmosphere—warm synth pads, brushed drums, a bassline that never rushes, the kind of music that plays in the background of neon-lit cafés or seaside hotels just after sunset. There’s a quiet nostalgia to it, a sense of looking out through tinted glass at something already passing, where sweetness is restrained and longing is carried in understatement rather than confession.
This version leans into texture and tone—colors, cooling coffee, drifting air—allowing them to echo like a familiar melody you can’t quite place. It lingers the way an old song does on late-night radio: not loud enough to demand attention, not soft enough to disappear, content to exist in that suspended space where memory, mood, and distance gently blur into one.
Mango yellow in the afternoon sky,
Bantayan blue where the seabirds cry,
Heaven knows I need a moment to breathe,
Caramel ice in my coffee and me.
Why not scarlet red or the grey of the sand,
Why do your colors keep tracing my hand?
Every sweet memory trembles and stirs,
Soft as your laughter, as distant as yours.
Your love is coffee, sweet with the ache,
Mellow and bitter in every heartbreak,
I sip and I wonder if I should have known—
Some kinds of beauty don’t let you go.
Your love is coffee, fading but true,
Warm in the sweetness, cold in the blue,
Even when silence is all that I prove,
I still taste you in every brew.
Streetlight shadows on quiet cafés,
Ocean keeps time in a slow soft sway,
Sugar dissolves but your name remains,
Spinning in circles inside my veins.
Laughter from elsewhere drifts through the air,
Strangers in love like we once were, there—
I stir the ice like I used to your smile,
Trying to cool what still stays awhile.
Your love is coffee, sweet with the ache,
Mellow and bitter in every heartbreak,
I sip and I wonder if I should have known—
Some kinds of beauty don’t let you go.
Your love is coffee, fading but true,
Warm in the sweetness, cold in the blue,
Even when silence is all that I prove,
I still taste you in every brew.
Sometimes I ask if it was a mistake,
Meeting the sun just to watch it break,
If I was foolish to learn your light,
Just to remember it every night.
Joy and sorrow in one slow dance,
One small yes in a long romance,
Now all I own is this quiet view,
And a glass full of what I once knew.
Your love is coffee, sweet with the ache,
Mellow and bitter in every heartbreak,
I sip and I wonder if I should have known—
Some kinds of beauty don’t let you go.
Your love is coffee, fading but true,
Warm in the sweetness, cold in the blue,
Even when silence is all that I prove,
I still taste you in every brew.