Emergency Landing

I was frozen in the moment—eyes still shut. Maybe only a millisecond had passed, but my soul already knew: something was wrong. Something was deeply, dangerously wrong. I sat near the front of the Boeing 777, window seat on the left. Three minutes into my flight from Denver to Honolulu, I was jolted awake by a sound that could rival a tank exploding. Not an engine humming or shaking—this was different. This was fatal.

Flying has never been my thing. Never trusted the whole “soaring metal tube at 35,000 feet” concept. I’ve grown—over time I could even nap mid-air—but comfort? No. Not with my life in the hands of strangers and steel. Still, this moment was strange. Alarming. But I wasn’t panicked. I was still. A dangerous, eerie kind of still. The kind people write about in stories but rarely survive to tell.

I slowly opened my eyes, turned to the man sitting by the aisle and asked, “You hear that?”

He just stared at me, wide-eyed, nodding. Of course he heard it. Everyone did—229 passengers and ten crew members. The sound came from the right side of the aircraft, like something had exploded clean through the wing. My heart knew what my mind couldn’t admit yet. This is not a drill.

“What are the flight attendants doing?” I asked.

He motioned with his hands, trying to mimic their calm faces and gestures to stay seated. But I knew better. Trained calm means nothing when the laws of physics are about to fold on you.

The plane shook. Trembled. Wobbled like a frisbee caught in a gust. Then—somehow—it climbed. Climbed. Like the pilot was still trying to make it to Hawaii.

I stared forward. “Bro… is he really still trying to make it to Honolulu on this thing?”

He shrugged like I was expecting him to know. The pilot’s voice crackled over the intercom, “We’re waiting to hear back from air traffic control to see what they want us to do.”

I flinched, offended by the casual uncertainty. What do they want you to do? “Land the fucking plane!” I said, maybe too loud, maybe not loud enough.

Outside the window, we soared above Broomfield, Colorado, 12,500 feet up. That boom… that was no turbulence. That was a malfunction written in fire. I could feel it. Planes have backup engines, I know. But logic don’t calm you when your soul’s already scribbling last words in your heart.

Cries began to swell throughout the cabin.

That’s when I started letting go.

I shuffled in my seat, feeling the fear creep up, but not in the usual way. Not terror. More like... surrender. I began making peace with everything. I thought of where I was headed—Honolulu—for a spoken word performance. I was ready for that stage. Ready to touch souls. But suddenly, that didn’t matter. This was the closing scene. And I knew it.

I looked out the window again, shaking my head like I’d just read my own obituary. “Damn… the Marc Marcel jig is up.”

And I was okay with that. Until I thought about the work.

Not the work I had done. But the work I hadn’t released.

Suddenly, the fear punched through me. Not because I was dying—but because my poems were going to die with me.

I whispered, “Fuck.”

My best work—my deepest truths—were on that damn laptop. In the overhead. And I hadn’t uploaded a single track to the cloud. Not a backup. Not a drive. Just raw, vulnerable genius... trapped in a plastic case... waiting to be buried in the sky.

The plane jerked again. My hands gripped the armrests. I looked out the window, then back up at the overhead bin. How the hell are we still in the air?

I was in a race against the laws of physics and a countdown only God could see. All I could think about was the album. Those poems. The truths that I had lived to tell, but never had the chance to share.

“Please,” I said. “Don’t let me die like this.”

I wasn’t okay anymore. Not with this death. Not with this ending.

“Please,” I whispered again, looking up toward whatever name you want to give It—God, Source, the Algorithm, the Silence that Watches. “Just give me the chance to perform them. Let me spit these words. Let me do what I came here to do.”

I tilted my head back and closed my eyes. “I swear to You… I will perform the fuck out of those poems.”

The plane rattled hard. My chest filled with heat. Breath came heavy. Sacred. I inhaled like it was the first time. Exhaled like it might be the last. If God is real, I thought, then He’s a drug dealer slanging the most potent substance on Earth—oxygen.

I wanted more. More of this illusion. More of this stage called life.

“I love this shit,” I whispered, eyes glassy but not broken.

This hallucination we call reality… I wasn’t ready to exit it. Not yet.

And that’s when I knew: I didn’t fear death. I feared dying unfinished.

Let me live, not because I’m afraid of death. But because I still have songs that haven’t been sung.