Written piece
Title Threads
Majory Usha Mumba
Zambia
About this piece
My submission is short Cloze about how threads are transformed and can be passed down, how they can be put together to form stranger bonds
Threads
Mom: Never pull a loose thread, honey. Instead, we sew it back in or tie it to make it stronger.
Natasha: Mom, what is my pretty black and white sweater made of?
Mom: It’s made of threads.
Natasha: What is your pretty red dress made of?
Mom: Cloth.
Natasha: What is the cloth made of?
Mom: Threads.
Natasha: What about my snazzy black jeans?
Mom: The same thing, honey—tiny threads woven or knitted together. Fibre spun into yarn, then shaped into cloth, then cut and sewn into clothes.
Natasha: But if it’s all made from the same thing, why does it feel so different? Some stretch, some don’t.
Mom: Because the same origin can be shaped differently.
Natasha: But even from the same cloth, things can become different?
Mom: What do you mean?
Natasha: Like the chitenge Grandma gave you—you made a dress for you and a jumpsuit for me.
Mom: Cloth carries different meanings. It can become anything. Thread can also repair what is torn.
Natasha: Sorry, Mom. I didn’t mean to tear your scarf.
Mom: It’s patched now. It won’t tear in that place again.
Natasha: Will you teach me how to sew?
Mom: One day, when you’re older—like my mother taught me.
I woke up thinking about that conversation. I don’t know why it returned now.
I had always wanted to be a fashion designer after that moment. But here I was, on my way to graduate as a lawyer.
It wasn’t that law was easy. It wasn’t. But I was still graduating, so I was clearly doing something right.
Still, I wondered how I got here—from a girl who saw herself in dresses and design, to someone in corporate law.
When you’re a child, the economy doesn’t exist in your imagination. Dreams are not measured against income or stability. You just choose freely.
So you say it proudly when asked: a fashion designer.
Not the Cinderella herself—but the one who transforms her. The one who turns ordinary things into something that feels like they were always meant to be beautiful.
But as you grow older, the world changes the question. Dreams start competing with practicality. In a middle-income reality, passion is often weighed against survival.
And slowly, without a single decision that feels dramatic, you end up elsewhere. Not a glamorous lawyer. Just a practical one. A path chosen, not imagined.
Two threads: who I was and who I became. Not separate lives, but strands crossing each other until they form one story.
The second semester was approaching, and I had to return to my boarding house. While packing, I began sorting through things I no longer needed.
Some of my clothes were missing. Probably in my sisters’ room—sisters, am I right? I have two.
In their room, I found something I didn’t expect: a woven white dress passed from my mother to me, then to my younger sister, and now to the youngest.
I stood still. Even the white bedding with pink clowns was once mine.
My things had become someone else’s life.
I also found my old hoodie. I hesitated. If I had forgotten it existed, maybe I no longer needed it. I could let it go.
Then I remembered a knitted blanket—made by my great-grandmother, according to my mother. Mine was still there, multicoloured and worn, but intact.
That’s when I understood hand-me-downs differently. Nothing is truly lost. It changes hands, meaning, and purpose.
I used to dream of a walk-in closet filled with new clothes—everything current, everything mine. A lawyer’s income could give me that.
But somewhere along the way, I stopped seeing clothes as threads, patterns, or design. They became trends, comparisons, things I wanted simply because I didn’t have them.
I sat down, overwhelmed, trying to understand what all of this meant.
Did I mourn the little girl I left behind? When I chose law, did I replace her—or abandon her?
Or did I simply assume she had no place here?
But clothes teach something different. You outgrow them before you are ready to let them go. You try to adjust yourself to what no longer fits. Yet there comes a point where shrinking is no longer growth.
One thing was certain: law was not an easy course. But I was still graduating, so I was clearly doing something right.
And maybe that was what I had misunderstood all along—not that I had become someone else, but that I had changed shape without disappearing.
So maybe nothing was truly lost. Not the little girl, not the dream, not even the version of me that once believed in fairy godmothers and impossible transformations.
Just woven differently now—into something I am still learning to recognize.
By Majory Usha Mumba