My mom has always said I walk like a duck. Legs swinging out with uneven paces. Maybe it was because I was told I was overweight growing up. Without a thigh gap, it was less comfortable to keep your legs close together when walking. No one likes chafing. But I have a feeling I always walk like this though, both before and after. Or is it because when I was younger, I would have the compulsion to touch every single corner I saw? Tables, benches, floor tiles. I also hated germs, so sticky and wet surfaces would awfully disgust me, yet I just had to do it regardless. I especially walked strangely then. It wasn't good news when one day I noticed my school's playground floor was entirely made of alternating squares, each square four corners to touch. It took the whole morning break to cover, but I did, up until the very last toll of the school bell and long after all the other kids had returned to class. I was hungry, tired, and alone by the end of it, and late to class again. Eventually, I made up a trick. Every so often, I would imagine a circle of aura. It would look like violet, I decided, even though at the time my favorite color was blue. It can be expelled from my body to cover all corners in the entire room, the entire street, the distant mountains in the Thai North, the metal corners of the strict signs in Germany, the painted roofs of Spain I have yet to see. Everything. Running over all imaginable corners of the world like a comforting wave. I could finally breathe. Maybe I was, in fact fact like a duck, kicking all around under the surface, needing to find any way to just keep moving forward.