The circle

My right knee points in the wrong direction. Instead of articulating forwards and backwards like it should, it moves on an angle—inwards, towards the other knee. If I’m clumsy while running, my knees knock together. I can only assume something went wrong at the manufacturing plant.

If I were dropped in a desert, with no point of orientation on the horizon, and were told to walk in a straight line, my footprints would soon drift off leftwards. They would continue drifting leftwards, even if it appeared to my own eyes that I was walking straight ahead. The slightly skewed nature of my gait would exaggerate over time. If the desert were big enough—and the inevitable exhaustion of body and mind were forever delayed—eventually I would loop around to my own footprints again.