THE FIRST MARK
October 18, 2025
They came in the mail today, the first stickers. Black, stitched, cut clean. A fabric emblem that holds its own reflection. M upright, M inverted, two halves meeting in the middle. The Double M. It reads the same in any direction. A mirrored claim of identity. Balance, inheritance, design. Not decoration. Declaration. The choice of fabric matters. Paper fades. Screens glitch. Cloth remembers touch. Fabric holds warmth, pressure, and time. It wrinkles, bends, and still returns to form. To make the first mark out of textile is to honor the hands that sewed and patched and carried names through generations. Authorship with texture. History rarely allowed that symmetry. Our names were recorded but rarely owned. Value was measured through other hands. The Double M rejects that imbalance. It does not bow. It mirrors. This is the quiet beginning of authorship. Before there is a platform, there is paper. Before there is an audience, there is mark making. Before we stand, we build. Brand before stand. This is not marketing language. It is preservation. To brand is to burn a name into the record, to ensure the story cannot be rewritten without consent. These stickers are not promotion. They are proof. A mirrored M that holds his initials — first and last, or first and middle, or middle and last. All of it his. All of it true. No matter how it turns, it remains intact. That is the lesson. The world will try to flip meaning, to profit from the version it prefers. The Double M stays still through it all. The first mark is not about arrival. It is about return.
