I woke up…… or so I thought. The disorientation was tremendous. I didn’t hurt anywhere. Nor did I remember having drunk anything the night before, if it was day now. Not remembering, I didn’t know what city I was in. The little light coming through the door allowed me to see the silhouette of something in the room but however much I opened my eyes I couldn’t guess what the objects were. I tried to feel around about me, looking for I don’t know exactly what, but I found nothing to cling to. I moistened my lips with my tongue, or at least I imagined I did, but there was no sensation. I began to feel very far away… But from where? The silence was so deep that it pierced my ears. I was scared, that was sure enough.

Furtively, a cautious blade of air travelled up through my nose and flooded my brain.

I woke up again. I grabbed a pen and started scribbling. It was clear. I wasn’t in balsamic Oporto, like that other time. Nor had I lost my head again over some woman who slipped through the vanilla, like so many other times. It was just my mother baking as she did every weekend her heady dish of red peppers, which wafted through the cracks in doors and windows out to the front hall where we played.

I don’t know how I could have got there, because there is no longer any such place or time, but I knew for an instant that it was Saturday afternoon and I was in the house in which I grew up.

Nico Munuera