Glass Cat

a poem by Roger B. Rueda

It weighed like memory—
cool in the palm,
still sticky with syrup breath,
the bottle bare now,
its red ribbon script flaking
like sunburnt skin.
You could still taste the fizz
if you kissed
the rim.

And yet, in the sultry
stillness of three p.m.—
that hour when light
spills like oil
on the floor tiles—
someone began to carve.

A boy, maybe. Or a girl
with a soldering pen
and a bandage
already blooming red.
They didn’t mean to make
a cat, at first.
They only wanted
to see what else
a bottle could become.

So they heated the neck,
let it soften into snout.
Filed it, careful not
to anger the edge.
Used pliers to coax
the curve into jaw,
added goblet stems
for legs—wobbly
as a newborn calf.

The ears curled
like windblown petals.
The tail never came,
but no one missed it.

When it stood—yes,
stood—on the warped
dining table, beside
a bowl of lanzones,
and a fly circling
last night’s adobo,
it gleamed.

The ribs caught the sun
and scattered it—
as if light
were a thing you could leash.

They laughed.
The neighbors, the lola
who came to borrow rice,
the cousin wiping sweat
with the back of his arm.
Not a cruel laugh,
but the kind
you reserve
for miracles.

Who makes
a cat from a Coke bottle?
Who dares
to dream that delicate?

And what was it, really—
if not the proof
that beauty arrives
only when you’re not
looking for it?

It didn’t meow.
It didn’t move.
But it stayed,
glass spine arched
toward the heat
like a prayer
you didn’t mean
to finish.