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, plotted before GPS existed, with marginalia in pencil: 'weather shift at 14:30', 'fuel burn off by 16:00'. I remember the tension of that flight—the silence between coordinates, the way the horizon looked different when you knew exactly where you weren't supposed to be. Still don’t know why I kept it. Maybe because it’s proof I once trusted my own eyes more than any machine.