THE WEB OF FAMILIARITY

jerry KWATCHEY
@kwatcheyjerry128608
1 month ago

#poetry
THE WEB OF FAMILIARITY

People are nurtured to be drawn to familiarity.
Before we understand choice,
before we learn possibility,
we cling to what feels known.

It begins quietly
with accents that sound like the ones
that rocked us to sleep,
tones that echo the comfort
of voices that shaped our earliest worlds.

We lean into familiar scents
the silent storytellers.
A whiff of smoke, spice,
the faint memory of someone’s perfume
and suddenly the past sits beside us
as if it never left.

We recognize familiar patterns too,
even the ones stitched with pain.
The mind memorizes repetition,
holding on to it like a map.
So even when the road is harmful,
we walk it again,
because our feet learned its turns
long before we learned discernment.

We gravitate toward familiar palettes
the colours of childhood rooms,
of people we trusted,
of places that taught us what warmth meant
and what coldness felt like.
Our eyes seek the shades
our hearts once called home.

Even our thoughts
those quiet strings inside us
are often borrowed echoes.
Inherited rhythms
passed down through generations,
guiding us, trapping us,
or keeping us loyal
to belief systems we never questioned.

Humanity, in many ways,
is a vast web of familiarity
threads of memory, culture, instinct, and comfort
interwoven so tightly
that we sometimes mistake repetition
for truth.

We return to what resembles us,
what reminds us of where we’ve been,
what mirrors the people
we once needed approval from.
Familiarity feels warm,
even when its warmth burns.

But there comes a moment
a quiet fracture,
a subtle shift,
a single awakening
when we realise the web does not just hold us;
it also holds us back.

Growth begins not with rebellion,
but with awareness.
With the courage to step
beyond the scent of old memories,
beyond the accents of old worlds,
beyond the patterns that raised us
but no longer serve us.

Sometimes the first unfamiliar step
feels like darkness
but it is only the darkness
of a room we have never entered before.
And every new room
expands who we are.

Familiarity may have shaped us,
but it does not have to define
who we become.

A Reflection from the SIMU Collection.

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