The map is folded into sixteen uneven rectangles. The paper has softened at the edges. A coffee ring marks the upper left corner like a private signature. I no longer remember why I bought it—probably because the digital version felt too clean, too certain.
I never used it to navigate. I used it the way some people keep old concert tickets: as proof that a particular version of myself once existed in a particular place.
Certain streets still make sense. The long avenue that ran beside the river. The small square where I ate bread and cheese on a bench. The side street that led nowhere useful but felt important at the time. Other parts of the map have become pure abstraction. The names no longer attach to any memory. They are just ink.
keep the map in the same drawer as spare batteries and unused envelopes. Every few months I take it out, unfold it carefully, and look at the places I never returned to. Then I fold it again, a little more carefully each time, as if the paper itself might eventually become the destination.