Losing It

I've been losing words
Old lover
Why am I standing in the kitchen
Lost
Bad habits, good health
Trying to gain weight
Wanting loss to matter
I cancel ancient friendships
With thought
Gone
My social calendar
Only doctors see me now

My Neurologist suggests I return to the internet.
My assistant says I haven't been the same since my last colonoscopy.
I don't think it's quite as simple as that.

I quit smoking on a whim. Started in 1949 or '50. Quit December 17th, 2014.

This is a game my mother played with me. She called it "Secretary." It has a noir quality in my memory with it's stark and vivid details. I dressed up in Maggy's cast off work clothes. My favorite outfit was a black velvet circle skirt, black high heels, a black blouse with bat-wing sleeves, all topped off with a hat  that had a black veil and a raven feather. I wore red lipstick and my hair in a tiny bun. I was six. I sat on her lap and learned to smoke like a grown-up.  She told me grown-ups didn't like children so I should act like a grown-up. At some point soon after that I had the realization that Maggy was a grown-up. Stranger still, I believed that in her job as "Executive Secretary," she sat on her bosses lap and smoked cigarettes.

My assistant just called to give me the highlights of todays news.
Florida man beheads mother on New Years Eve...
Woman from some intermountain state takes kids shopping. Toddler in cart gets hold of gun in mother's purse and shoots mother dead.  I hope they were in a Walmart. There was a third one but I've already forgotten all the details.

Happy New Year!