About Me

Hi, I'm Harper Lee Simmons. It's pronounced Har-peh, because my dad's from the south. He's a foreign service agent from the US; my mom's a professor from Morocco. I grew up dividing my time between Rabat, Casablanca, and the countryside, with occasional trips to France. (I speak Arabic, French, and, yes, English.) I was born in Morocco but spent my first year or two in the States to get some fancy medical treatments. Mom and I and my brother and sister usually hang out at home while Dad's away on business. I have a younger brother, Will, and a younger sister, Charlotte. Dad named us all after his "heroes of literature": Nelle Harper Lee, William Shakespeare, and Charlotte Bronte. Mom and us kids are Muslim and Dad's a Baptist. He met my mother on an assignment and hasn't been able to get his heart away from Morocco since. Now I'm in the States attending a boarding school. I got detained after a fifty-state whirlwind tour, probably because of my religion. Living at "home" has been difficult to adjust to, but I'm getting there. With some help from my wonderful teacher and new friends, my United States citizenship has become something tangible. Oh, and I'm a poet. Yeah, I might not be your typical American Girl... but I think that's something I can live with.

26 June 2006

Ooh, cha cha!

arrival check-up
someone
told me
this place was
TOTALLY different
than it has turned out to be.

Sam,
for example,
is not shy at all.
In fact, yesterday
we played
"Tell All"
and she came in first.

Of course we were talking about boys.
In Morocco,
if anyone but my mum and dad found out,
I would have been labeled
BAD INFLUENCE
but no one ever tells anything about sleepovers anyway...
and it seems to be the same in America.

Strange how I feel so out of place
and in place
at the same time.
This is where I belong -
O summer days of long -
and even though it seems to be
that sun is burning down on me
odd how it feels so different than home.

List of friends:
-Piper, the crazy heiress one
the one who decides
we are going tanning
and then insists we wear sunscreen
-Sierra, the artistic one
the one who decides
we're not going to be part of the group
the one who matches me best
-Sam, the "shy" one
the one who acts like the princess she is
but not when she's alone with us
then she's normal
-Kailey, the surfer
the other writer
the one who gets in on crazy ideas
and actually follows through
-Linsi, the journalist
sometimes she's serious,
and sometimes not,
I can't figure her out,
but she's nice.
-Lissie, the silent leader
and lots of other girls.
they are all beautiful
they are all my friends...

dream
you turned into your father
and refused to aknowledge me
like i was me
and then,
you didn't want to go camping
and were afraid of bugs
and oh stars,
if you were afraid of camping,
you wouldn't be yourself,
miss I-went-Tent-Camping
and laughing at my toilets!