Small Surprises in a
Largely Dull World
by Saadia Peerzada
February 5th, 2022

Illustration by Joseph P. Sgambati III
In the repetition of the daily,
buried feelings jump out of walls and carpets
like dust mites,
smaller things surprise me,
Like the gentleness of Punjabi 1
in carrying grief
and our capacity for forgiveness:
phir vi teri khairan mangan/ sach kehni aan yaaran 2
(still, I’ll ask for your goodness, I promise my love)
How love is stored in the
doodles on your sister’s hands,
in languages far out of reach,
carrying all the hopes
we invest in the other side,
how spring is oppressive
in all the ways winter fails to be,
it is the hope to be dug deeper into the ground
like a seed comfortable in sleep.
As the daily repeats itself,
smaller things surprise me,
like knowing the grief
of not grieving
and preserving the body
at the heart of that immensity,
how the sun never rose after the day you turned eleven
that so many books and so many poems
never filled the void at the centre of your being,
How you lay down
and your centre of gravity
becomes an epicentre of disaster.
Now smaller things surprise me,
like how disposable this fever dream is
where we think we live forever,
where we get to live forever
and love doesn’t.
An Indo-Aryan
language spoken by
the people of Punjab
in India and Pakistan.
A lyric from Jasleen Royal’s song Nit Nit
John 13: 34 NKJV “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”
Introduction, page 3; Music and Faith, Jonathan Arnold.