what i want to become of all this

My aunt tells me that the first English word I uttered
was the word dead. I was three and didn't know
any better. How easy it
was then to say something as trite and irresolute as the word
dead and make someone happy enough to remember
it for the rest of her life. Now I feel the stiff competition for
words, as if everyone else is using up all of mine, what
I am trying my best to say. There is so much I do not
know how to explain or talk about. My father
once asked me to write a story about him after he dies
and I could not imagine how he got the courage
to say something like that out loud. Maybe it was his belief
in that first word and the way I feared it
that convinced him that it would all be true
some day. What I would not give to be able to take a slim collection
of unused words out of my pocket, all saying how much I loved
the living and the man who first asked if the hunger
I was feeling was the kind he could do
something about.