The map I kept from 1987

Found it in a drawer yesterday—folded, brittle, the edges worn from years of being tucked into a flight log. A hand-drawn route over northern Syria, marked with red pencil: 'fly at 2000 feet, avoid radar cluster near Deir ez-Zor.' I don’t know why I kept it. Not for the data. For the certainty that someone else had once believed this path was safe. Now it’s just paper. But I still trace the line with my thumb like it might still breathe.