However far ahead we get, however far behind we're pushed, however hard we pull ourselves

away from the land, from our own histories, from each other, we are bound.
We are bound to the winged pollinators, to the green leaves, to all the people down the street and across oceans

who sustain us in a thousand impersonal, industrialized ways.
We are bound to the lies our ancestors told themselves, and the ones we tell ourselves now.

Tethered Literary is a place for all our bonds—for the ones that chafe, that choke, that we have tried to deny;

for the ones that keep us small, the ones that haunt us; but also for the bonds that hold and warm

and feed us and help us grow towards open air.