I was the last person on a plane that never landed

I was sitting in the cockpit, alone, the engines humming like a lullaby. The sky was the colour of old silver, and the altimeter kept ticking down past 10,000 feet—no runway below, no lights, just endless quiet. I remember thinking, not with fear, but with a kind of weary pride: 'This is how it ends. Not with a crash, but with a sigh.' Then I woke up, heart pounding, still smelling the coffee from the galley, the one I’d made at 3 a.m. for no reason. I don’t know what it means. But I do know I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the third sentence of that dream—the one that came right aft