Assistant Editor Connor Yeck: In “Incongruous States of Dress,” Emilee Prado transforms nakedness, touch, and yearning into vibrant moments of reflection. Our speaker recalls physical contact as steam and citrus, while aquariums and art galleries become spaces to “lament public decency.” With each layered sequence, we’re left wondering what the body seeks, and perhaps the ways we can listen to it better.
To hear Emilee read her story, click below:
Incongruous States of Dress
Our woman is one who dislikes nakedness during sex. It’s not that she’s anxious to have physical barriers of clothing between flesh, no. It’s that sexual intimacy fails to unwrap her in a way that calls her to undress.
Skin to skin with Carl had been all clamber and steam engine. Ryu felt like wax over wire. Louisa, citrus and sandpaper. Sergio was refrigerated chicken breast.
Our woman laments public decency in the art gallery. She wants to stand bare before I Saw Three Cities. She wants to hang her arms at her sides and say Here I am.
The aquarium, likewise, would not welcome her nudity reflected among the underwater life. She longs to see the kelp slide along her limbs, the shoals of fish swim through her, all the while feeling cool dry air caress her.
Once, deep in the labyrinthine stacks of the library, our woman’s fingertips were tracing the openings between the lines of ink. As she sank down to the floor, her head deep in the text, the shirt button over her heart came unsnapped.
Shhh, she thought she heard someone say.
Emilee Prado’s fiction and essays appear in Hobart, CRAFT, Orca, Vautrin, Subnivean and elsewhere. She also writes about film and has work forthcoming in several anthologies. She received her master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Edinburgh in 2019. Find out more at emileepradoauthor.com.
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