The thing is this: a person sitting at a table
eating a peach maybe a small bowl of rice
various thoughts and ideas traveling through her brain
suddenly realizes that every other person
too has a brain occupied in more or less
the same way the difference being that
whatever riffles through one remains
shuttered up unbudging in another or
yet becomes tangled in a sort of chaos
in still an Other and so on differing
to the point of mystery
so that each to the other is only
a map of a territory at best
which gives no indication of
what the houses there are like
who lives in them
what they’ve planted in their yards
how narrow or wide their streets are
and whether or not their loved children
are safe to play and wander as they’d like.