excerpt from my short story, Bad Faith

That night I dreamt I was with him. We were in a strange city at night, maybe Florence, walking hand-in-hand down cobblestone streets. He led me down a narrow passageway that was lined with marble statues of naked Romanesque women. There were so many of them that I started feeling unsettled by the thought of having to compete with these stone beauties. Morris stopped at one in particular. Gazing at her, he said to me, “You are my favorite.” It was a statue of a young woman, draping a sheet of billowing fabric over her front side, her back exposed and naked, save for the long curls of hair that hung there loosely. He reached up and fondly touched the curve in her lower back, the part that merged into her plump bottom. “Isn’t she exquisite?” he asked. And then he leaned down and gently kissed my lips. I awoke, flushed, still tasting the flavor of Morris’s lips on mine, floating in an ethereal space high above my body. It took a few seconds for me to come down, back to my bed and the emptiness of my bland bedroom.