the first sentence is always the hardest. and: there must be a first sentence.
once, long ago, there was a person with a mouth like mine, that moved like mine, that made sounds like mine (or not), and on a single day in history that mouth moved like mine and uttered a series of sounds that was the first sentence. we will never know what they said. we will never know if it was a warning. we will never know it it was a profession of love. we will never know if it was an anguished cry of grief. if it was about food. or a god. or the weather. or a birth. or the sunset.

there had to be a second sentence. it didn’t have to be a reply to the first, although it might have been. we will never know what the second sentence was either. but we do know there was a third, and a fourth, and so on. until now. we will never know the number, but there is a number. there is, and will always be, no matter how large, a finite number of sentences that have been spoken and will ever be spoken. the sentences i spoke today have a number. and the sentences before them, and the sentences after them.