Destiny Reflects | Winter 2025
A Pause to Imagine What Could Be
Winter is the time of year that invites us to pause, turn inward, and reflect on the year behind us and what lies ahead. It is a season to imagine what could be, from blank journal pages not yet filled with ink-blotted stories, to lumps of clay shaped into well-loved mugs that warm hands and hearts.
Across cultures and generations, winter has long been a season of tending. Of shared meals, storytelling, and quiet rituals that help us mend, remember, and prepare for what comes next. Reflection becomes its own kind of nourishment.
This winter’s chapter, Destiny Reflects, leans into that pause. The following poem, Imagine: An Incantation to Practice Hope, and Heal Battle Fatigue by Kelie Richardson, offers a gentle call to gather the scattered pieces of ourselves and consider what healing, connection, and possibility might look like when we allow ourselves to slow down.
Imagine: An Incantation to Practice Hope, and Heal Battle Fatigue
Kellie RichardsonGather yourself. Right now.
Gather the fragments of you
from the four corners
from the ocean floor
from the clouds from the chrysalis
and use your imagination.
Imagine toward healing.
toward expansion.
toward the comfort of connection.
Imagine away from constraints.
from the limits and lies of shame.
from the trepidation and short mindedness of fear.
Imagine new shapes,
new worlds,
new realms.
Imagine the welcoming stranger.
Imagine the holes as containers.
Imagine the cracks as portals.
Imagine nothing wasted.
Imagine you matter.
Imagine you have a choice.
you have power.
you have the power.
Imagine flight on foot.
Imagine caring for the unseen.
Imagine the door unlocked.
Imagine bearing the best fruit
in your own backyard.
Imagine you are enough.
Just imagine.
Kellie Richardson is a queer Black writer and creative born and raised in Tacoma, Washington. Her work primarily explores themes of love, loss, and longing, with particular attention to how those themes intersect with Black American humanity. A former Tacoma Poet Laureate, Kellie has released two collections of poetry, What Us Is (2017) and The Art of Naming My Pain (2024), both published by Blue Cactus Press. Passionate about experimentation and art as a liberatory practice, her poetry often integrates visual elements such as collage and color. Richardson is currently working on her third collection and attending the Rainier Writer’s Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. You can learn more about her work on her website and Substack.
Downing Pottery ceramics that celebrate home ~ handmade in Tacoma, WA by Sarah D Woodson
