In the wake
of Ray Rice's indefinite suspension
domestic abuse survivors
have started the trending Twitter hashtags
"#WhyIStayed" and "#WhyILeft".
Maybe the NFL should start its own hashtags
such as #WhyNFLStayedWithRice
after suspending him for two games
"because we didn't want
a little mistake like that
to keep a grown man
from playing a game for us"
and #WhyNFLLeftRice
"because harboring a known abuser
to play a game for us
was suddenly
becoming embarrassing
and politically inconvenient."
This poem © 2014 Emily Cooper.
