Remember the days
     when you dreaded
     a scratch at the back
     of your throat --

harbinger of a cough
     that you thought
     would get you rushed off
     to quarantine.

Or, at least, get a footlong swab
    shoved through your nasal cavity.

Best case, it would put all eyes upon you, 
     as the public wondered whether 
     you were their Typhoid Mary --
     (Except Mary was asymptomatic,
       and - clearly - you were not.)

We all learned that the one cough
      that one can never suppress
      is the one that you desperately
      wish to. 

That cough won't be silenced.