First Confession
Issue 19
Cecelia Feichtel
2026
First Confession
Back before my world collapsed, I had a dream we were together.
We sat across from one another on a vacant glass floor,
and the night sky’s crystalline refractions painted the darkness
with fragments of iridescent splendor.
Great marble pillars rose from the blackness,
arching up, filling overturned seats with eyes that watched us
like stars. People sat above our heads, peering downward
akin to wingless, fleshy bats cloistered against stalactites.
The night was endless and smooth,
an infinite universe where the ceiling of the amphitheater
opened to reveal the elliptical glory of eternity.
The cool glass beneath my palms amended the lack of wind.
All was quiet except for the faint drip of water
from a source I could not see. Your head was tilted upward,
your eyes trained upon the celestial grandeur
that had no beginning and no end.
Perhaps we were moving. I could not tell, but I would not have cared.
You were with me, and in the emptiness,
and the night, and the staring eyes of our faceless audience,
all I needed was another soul to tell me there is purpose. ✪ .
✰ ✧ ⭒ . . . ..
Drip ✵ ✫ .
drip ☆ ✰ .
drip— ⭒ ✧ ✩ .
✵ .
and I could not tell where the water was coming from. .
Your voice was gentler and wiser than I’d ever known it: ..
… .
“Isn’t it wonderful that we are the vessels ✪ .
by which the universe can experience itself?” . .
⭒ ⭒
We sat. ✵
The stars blinked.
The audience blinked right back.
☆ .
⭒ .
The audience blinked right back.
☆ .
⭒ .
When I told you about my dream the next day,
you laughed. You said you were flattered that
I thought so highly of you, to picture you as God,
but that I shouldn’t get my hopes up.
After all, you hate the world, and you hate the people in it.
You don’t believe in our significance. But in my dreams,
you do. Maybe that’s why I wanted to see you
dream deeper than the truth of empty, endless nothing.
Cecelia Feichtel (she/her) is a sophomore Creative Writing and Earth & Environmental Sciences double major at Susquehanna. She is also pursuing a Chemistry minor and plays string bass in the SU orchestra. On campus, she is the Head of Pre-Production for Studio SU, and she recently finished the production process for her second short film. In her free time, she enjoys writing speculative short fiction, obsessing over Isaac Asimov, and irritating her cats, Hamlet and Shelby. Her biggest creative passions involve examining human connection in the age of technology, which has informed much of her recent writing. This is her first appearance in a printed publication.