It was like he was holding a breath he didn’t know he had
          It was like thawing snow when the sun finally has its control back in its grasp.

The buzzing, the chatter, had quieted. Someone had turned the volume down and the contrast up,
           highlighting the differences.

Yet those differences were the same, they resembled each other in the strangest way. Everything was the same,
                but so, so different.

He didn’t know why or how. Just that the world was now viewed by him in this way.
          He wondered if he could go back,

to when the hateful words were just things people say,
to when global events didn’t matter
        because all he wanted was to cook a perfect loaf of bread.

Now they were all connected.

A bombing in Pakistan sent shards into his heart,
climate change weakened his very being,
that boy being bullied for his sexuality was a stabbing into his gut.

He felt it all.
The feeling was almost too much.
He felt too much.

The ants being stepped on as kindergarteners made their way to school,
the elephants being shot for their tusks.

Every word,
      every shot,
  every flame burned within
him.