Alice Lowe

October 2025 | nonfiction

Last Dance

Take politicians, for example. Some know when to bow out gracefully; others hang on doggedly, even after their health, energy, and mental acuity have begun to compromise their effectiveness. (Sorry, Joe, that includes you.) The time of reckoning seems to hover around the age of 80. Some still claim good health and all their marbles and see no reason not to keep going. Bernie at 83 and Nancy at 85—still fighting the good fight. Others may yearn for the calm and quiet of private life, be ready to retire from the rat race.

I ran my last half marathon at 80, my last 10K a year later. My race times were still good, my legs still strong, but I didn’t want to wait for something to go wrong. It was time, and I’ve had no doubts, no regrets. A friend is going strong at 84, and runners in their 80s are still clocking the miles and crossing the finish line at the Boston Marathon every year. I cheer their successes but don’t yearn to be among them.

There’s no retirement age for writers, no urgency that might compel them to stop. Alice Munro and Philip Roth called it quits at around 80, though I’ll bet both could have kept producing quality work if they’d chosen to. Like Margaret Atwood, her creativity and energy seemingly boundless at 85. My friend Priscilla Long published a book about creativity in old age at 79, her fifth book since turning seventy, and said that she had plans for ten more.

Age isn’t the determining factor, but here I am at 81 wondering if it’s time to throw in the towel. I’m in excellent health, can still wield a pencil, type fast, read fine print on paper and screen. Yet writing has become a struggle. I moan to friends: the well is dry. Dredging and pumping yield nothing. Is it temporary or permanent? Have I said all I want to say?

A wise friend advises, “Don’t stay too long at the dance when you feel there is no dance left in you.” But how do you recognize that feeling? I’ve kicked off my dancing shoes, and I enjoy sitting it out, watching and listening from my seat on the sidelines. Maybe this is it; maybe I’m done. But then I pick up a beat … I start tapping my toes … my body sways with the rhythm. Maybe once more around the floor?

Alice Lowe

Alice Lowe’s flash nonfiction has been published this past year in Broken Teacup, Bluebird Word, Masque & Spectacle, Painted Pebble Lit Mag, Skipjack Review, In Short, Drifting Sands, and Burningword. She has been twice cited in Best American Essays. Alice writes about life, literature, food, and family in San Diego, California. Read and reach her at www.aliceloweblogs.wordpress.com

Mary Ann McGuigan

October 2025 | nonfiction

Sleeping Arrangements

• On a Bronx fire escape, curled up on couch cushions, desperate for a breeze
• With my sister in a top bunk that belongs to our cousin, in a room that isn’t ours, in a Brooklyn apartment never meant for us
• In a bedroom hardly bigger than the bed, with my mother and my brother and my sister, lying head to foot in a pointless effort to give each other space
• On two lumpy armchairs shoved together as a makeshift berth after the first eviction
• Near the window in an armchair, pen still in hand, scribbling my stories before morning traffic wakes the others
• At a desk in class, chin propped on palm, until an ill-shaven Jesuit pauses his lecture on Aeschylus to poke me with his cane
• On a carpeted floor that smells of beer and party smoke, too drunk to drive home, too scared to face my mom
• In too many beds with too many strangers hoping I’ll wake early and be gone
• Beneath the sound of a seagull’s song in the hot, salty air, on a blanket not far from the water’s edge
• In a rocker near the window, where a streetlamp keeps watch nonchalantly while I nurse a baby too curious to sleep
• Night after night under a Ninja Turtles comforter with a child in my arms till his fever breaks or the bogyman concedes defeat
• On a train that left for the city before dawn, crowded with thick coats, aging briefcases, and rigid to-do lists
• With two restless Little Leaguers, all elbows and knees, who’ve stayed up too late, wired on candy they’ve looted in Frankenstein’s name
• In our cabin’s top bunk, with bugs rude and riotous outside and my knees scraping the ceiling’s wooden planks
• At the dining room table at two in the morning, face down on a yellow legal pad crammed with fits and starts of dialogue and margin notes
• In costly New York hotel rooms paid for by clients who expect me at their conference tables at eight a.m. sharp, no matter how many first days of school I have to miss
• In a flimsy tent with my eight-year-old, both frightened by the pounding rain and relentless darkness
• In a window seat, engines growling, legs cramped, hours to go
• On a recliner, clutching a Teddy bear, waiting again for a teenager to arrive home safely
• On someone else’s sheets, with someone else’s husband
• At a New England B&B, the smell of bacon drifting in, the day ours alone
• On my meditation cushion, with the best of intentions
• Folded into the arms of someone who loves me, at last
• Sitting at my desk in Midtown, chair turned toward the windows of the fortieth floor across the way, framing suits that move with mysterious purpose and talk that makes no sound
• On the shoulder of a Mets fan, somewhere in the sixth inning
• In a Broadway theatre, on a New York weeknight in a seat we paid too much for
• Fitfully, in a chair at the bedside of my son drying out in an emergency ward
• Swaying in a hammock under a June night’s sky, believing the worst is over
• In a queen-sized bed, in a master bedroom, alone
• Soundly on a loveseat in my study, a first draft finally done
• Tossing and turning in a room beneath a room where a young man lies homeless again, no match for his demons, fearing I will trade my life for his
• With the touch of a grandchild’s breath on my cheek, his weight on my heart, sensing but not seeing that there’s only this moment

Mary Ann McGuigan

Mary Ann McGuigan’s creative nonfiction has appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Brevity, Citron Review, The Rumpus, and elsewhere. The Sun, Massachusetts Review, North American Review, and many other journals have published her fiction. Her collection Pieces includes stories named for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net; her new story collection, That Very Place, was released in September 2025. The Junior Library Guild and the New York Public Library rank Mary Ann’s novels as best books for teens; Where You Belong was a finalist for the National Book Award. She loves visitors: www.maryannmcguigan.com.