Reflexes don’t involve the brain, sneezing, coughing, blinking.
Automatic responses, designed to keep you safe,
We use them without thinking.
Mine doesn’t always work, that shortcut to action.
I used to joke about having asbestos fingers.
Only feeling hot and cold in the extreme, gathers traction.
The pain kicks in later, much later, sometimes too late.
My fingers are almost void of a print, smooth.
That’s what years of unregistered burns create.
Interoception, is a sense of what’s going on inside.
understanding, feeling, knowing, am I hot? am I hungry?
So, I smile at the ‘we are all the same’, the implied.
It’s a well-meaning but ignorant platitude.
I rub my smooth fingertips with my thumbs.
I laugh and say ‘Sure we are’ but then allude….
‘Have you been late for work too because you had to change your socks?’