The Cough No One Hears

Coughing for weeks, no one investigates
Slum, refugee camp, outskirts of the city
Disease of the past, the reports say
While you cough blood in the present

Curable for decades, but the cure doesn't arrive
Where profit doesn't follow, neither does the medicine

The cough no one hears
Echoes in a forgotten lung
The cough no one hears
Eradicated only in the headlines

In the rich hemisphere, it's a statistic at zero
In the poor hemisphere, it's a sentence with no date
Same bacteria, different worlds
Same disease, different values placed on life

The cough no one hears
Echoes in a forgotten lung
The cough no one hears
Eradicated only in the headlines

It wasn't science that failed
It was the distribution of who deserves to live

The cough no one hears
Until it stops coughing
The cough no one hears
And then, finally, silence

Eradicated only in the headlines