Written piece
Thread of Us
Bright Urassa
Tanzania
About this piece
It is a poem about culture, heritage, and belonging across the Commonwealth. Like threads in a quilt, our traditions, histories, and identities are distinct yet inseparable together weaving something richer than any one nation could hold alone.
Threads of Us
We are woven from different looms,
Stitched by rivers, red soil, and monsoons,
Our colours borrowed from the spice and the bloom,
From the drumbeat that echoes across every room.
My grandmother's hands knew the pattern by heart,
The way cloth remembers what history can't chart,
How a story lives longer in fabric than stone,
How a people stay rooted though scattered and blown.
From the Caribbean's salt to the African plain,
From the hills of Colombo to Edinburgh's rain,
We carry our cultures like cloth on our backs,
Not burdens, but banners, not losses, but tracks.
One quilt, many threads, each colour its own,
Yet warmer together than any alone.
What we inherit, we offer; what we've known, we share,
A Commonwealth sewn from the fabrics we wear.