Familiarity Bias

If acquaintances were everything

they were supposed to be,

we wouldn't be handing out

loves and lives

to strangers.

If family were everything

we were told it is,

we wouldn't be learning from books

how to love ourselves.

And yet,

every time we desire,

every time we love or lust,

we rush to build familiarity, 

brick by brick.

Perhaps that's the irony:

we distrust the people

we know by inheritance,

then spend our lives

trying to make intimates

of those we don't.

Human intelligence

is an evolutionary joke;

if only

we were self-aware.