The map I kept from 1987

Found it in a drawer today — a hand-drawn flight path over the Black Sea, annotated in pencil with wind speeds and fuel burn estimates. I remember the navigator’s table at RAF Lakenheath, the way the light hit the grid lines just before dawn. It wasn’t supposed to be saved. But I did. Not for the data, not for the route. For the quiet certainty that someone had once believed this moment mattered enough to record.