The Price of Oxygen

They told us

oxygen was free—

like the sky didn’t have a landlord,

like breathing wasn’t slowly being

monetized.

 

But look closer—

there’s a barcode stamped on every inhale,

a receipt curling out of the mouths

of the poor.

 

You ever notice

how the people with the least

are the ones paying the most

just to stay alive?

 

I’m talking oxygen tanks with price tags,

inhalers locked behind glass like luxury items,

hospitals that don’t heal—

they calculate.

 

Every gasp is a transaction.

Every cough is a coin dropping

into a system that feeds

on the fragile.

 

Tell me why survival

got a subscription fee.

 

Why breathing comes with interest.

 

Why a child somewhere

is learning the cost of air

before they ever learn algebra.

 

This ain’t nature—

this is design.

 

Big buildings with glass teeth

biting chunks out of the desperate,

corporations with hands so clean

you can’t see the blood

until you look at the numbers.

 

Because numbers don’t cry—

they just climb.

 

Profit margins rising

like smoke from a house

we can’t afford to put out.

 

And we’re inside it.

 

We are inside it—

choking politely,

waiting our turn

to be told how much our lungs are worth.

 

“Sorry,” they say,

“coverage denied.”

 

Denied—

like breathing is a privilege

you gotta earn.

 

Like being alive

is some exclusive club

and the membership fee

is your dignity.

 

And don’t even get me started

on food—

 

How the earth grows abundance

but shelves sell scarcity.

 

How hunger isn’t an accident,

it’s engineered—

processed, packaged,

priced just out of reach

so the rich can feast

on the illusion

that they deserve more.

 

While the rest of us

learn how to starve quietly.

 

This system—

this machine—

it don’t run on oil.

 

It runs on us.

 

On our empty stomachs,

our untreated pain,

our silent funerals

that could’ve been prevented

if breathing wasn’t

a business model.

 

So tell me—

what’s the price of oxygen?

 

Is it a number?

A policy?

A signature on a form

that says you can’t afford

to exist?

 

Or is it this—

 

this boiling rage

in the chest of every person

who’s ever had to choose

between eating

and staying alive.

 

Because I’m done pretending

this is normal.

 

Done pretending

this is fair.

 

Done pretending

that a world

where people die from poverty

in the presence of abundance

is anything less than violence.

 

So yeah—

 

they can put a price

on oxygen.

 

They can slap labels

on food,

on medicine,

on survival itself—

 

but what they can’t price

is what happens next.

 

Because pressure builds.

 

And even the quietest lungs

eventually learn

how to scream.