That’s One Fun House Your Mind Owns

One of the more precarious
Social situations occurs
When persons eyeing each other

Are each thinking what the other
Might be thinking of them. They can’t
Possibly well coordinate,

Each with an imaginary
Other’s thoughts, which are just their own
Imagination of themselves,

Occupying their consciousness.
Without second-order theory
Of mind operating smoothly,

The result is a fantasy
Of someone else’s fantasy
Of the fantasizer’s being.

It gets twisted as Donne’s eye-beams
But with nothing connecting them,
Spooky action at a distance—

What you must be thinking of what
They must be thinking of you as
You observe them observing you.