“It Might Have Been Me” by Gail Hosking

Photo credit: Jade Koroliuk

Sometimes you get lucky, and you aren’t the old woman dead in her yard, her head turned sideways, her gray bun visible, her spotted dog panting under a tree. Sometimes you get lucky and walk out of your bombed apartment with an ironing board and a bag of fresh bread. Sometimes your whole village gets lucky and the bombs land elsewhere. Or it’s your blue chair perched upstairs in the rubble, leaning against the only steadfast wall. Your black cat sleeps on the cracked concrete stairs as your young son surveys the horizon like a bird searching for a nest.

Artist Statement

“The soul thinks in images,” Aristotle said. Which is why, I have not been able to stop thinking/imagining the scenes from the war in Ukraine. At a recent writing retreat, I began writing short poetic prose pieces or poems using those images. This piece is just one of that collection. The subject of war, alienation, change, and grief have been subjects I’ve written about for many years, as I try to grasp the enormity of it all.

Gail Hosking’s writing has been anthologized and published in many literary journals. She is the author of the memoir Snake’s Daughter: The Roads in and out of War, as well as two books of poems, Adieu and Retrieval. She was a finalist for the Center for Book Arts Chapbook contest, a finalist for Iowa Review’s creative non-fiction contest, a semi-finalist for “Discover the Nation” poetry prize and a recent finalist for River Teeth CNF book contest. Two of her essays were considered “most notable” in Best American Essays of 2015 and 2016. She holds an MFA from Bennington College and taught at RIT for fifteen years. She loves to quilt, hike, and “make things.”