Outcast

Each sneeze portends a viral doom,
Each cough, tuberculosis;
You'd better not tell your folks or friends
About your minor nasal quirks,
Or they'll label you a leper
From now until the undertaker,
Fifty years from this healthy age,
Affixes a sanitary seal
To your plywood coffin.
They'll hold every rhonchal emission against you:
Every sniffle and honk is the tick of a bomb
Certain to blast them into perdition.
They will hold you to account for
Every random pain they suffer,
Every ill and perceived injustice,
Any cloud that mars their clear blue skies,
For you are the grim pariah.
So keep your maladies to yourself!
Don't gurgle or whimper or moan,
Lest those "faithful comrades" turn on you
And confine you to the lazarette.