There’s a receipt in a book on the nightstand that has been there since March.

It’s from the corner shop, milk and something else I can’t read because the ink has gone that thermal-paper grey. The corner is bent from where I tucked it in quickly, meaning to come back. And I did come back, just not to that page. I came back to the nightstand, to the ritual of putting the book down at the same time each evening, patting the cover like some kind of promise, and then turning off the lamp.

Five months. Same receipt. Same page.

I keep thinking I should feel guilty about it. I don’t. I actually like it there. That little strip of faded paper is doing a job no app or Kindle percentage bar ever could. It’s holding the last place where I was fully absorbed. Page 112, if you’re curious. A conversation between two women in a restaurant that I read three times before the house went quiet and I finally put the light out.

I haven’t gone past it because going past it means the scene is behind me. And some scenes, I think, you’re allowed to sit with for as long as they need.

We talk a lot about finishing books. Reading goals, yearly tallies, the quiet pressure to keep the numbers moving. But nobody ever talks about the ones we pause, not because we’ve lost interest, but because something on that page is still working on us.

My receipt isn’t a failure to finish. It’s a decision to stay. What’s holding you on that page?