At breakfast Luis Felipe told me there’s a poet who calls his wife ‘beloved’. ‘How do you mean?’ I asked. ‘Just like that. In public, wherever, he’ll say: “Beloved, could you pass the sugar?” Or: “Beloved, the bread, please.”’

Luis Felipe smokes a lot. Tonight we were drinking mezcal, he lit a cigarette and I felt like smoking too. I used to smoke a lot before the accident. Loads. I started when I was at university. At first I didn’t smoke much, one or two a day. After the accident – before I hallucinated that the blanket covering me was an exotic plant with a temperature of forty degrees – and my gallbladder ruptured, that day I smoked a whole packet and had to go back to hospital. Like almost all the days leading up to that, I was smoking Marlboros. I have a sudden urge to smoke now. I decided to give up because it seemed like my activities had become nothing more than a thread which, like the thread in a necklace, connected my twenty a day. It’s so important to be able to see yourself differently, although when I’m with my friend and he’s smoking and the conversation’s really flowing, it makes me want to go back to it. Maybe I could start again, but only when I’m chatting to Luis Felipe.

Missed call from Jonás. I’ll try calling back.

Last night I heard a bad poet read. As I listened to the soporific verses dedicated to his beloved, I felt like I was watching a snail glide from one side of a floor tile to the other. His words were like a long trail of slime.

There’s a church in Oaxaca with a statue in it called Holy Child, Mover of Hearts. The sheer quantity of balloons, cards, votive offerings and candles beneath it is enough to move the heart. If I hadn’t been with my friend, I would have knelt down and begged for Jonás to come back.

I remembered the Holy Child of Grants. He could have a place in a church somewhere. The Divine Child who holds a scroll in his left hand, a piece of parchment showing the terms and conditions of the grant. The Holy Child has a miniature chair. I could offer the service of dressing the Saint. Provide accessories like a basket, carrycot or cradle. A stand to prop the Divine Child upright. A bell jar, glass case or cabinet to display him in if you’re awarded the grant. Flowers, electric candles, literary medals, stamps, lithographs, miniature books of poems, state prizes, vinyl records, scale models. Or any other item produced by Mexican artists between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five who want to be considered for the grant.