DWP - only one remains: four-line poem prompt

his final days are wrought with pain
but matilde stays patiently and tends to him;
it is ironic that of six siblings he helped and loved,
all five have turned their backs and only one remains.

(based on a true story i heard from so many years ago)

PROMPT - describe a house

A concrete fence, at least 10 feet tall, surrounds the house. At the top, pieces of broken glass have been planted on concrete to deter thieves, perhaps, and for good measure barbed wires have also been installed at a forty-five degree angle. Ivy leaves have crept up both from inside and the outside of the fence, masking the broken glass.

You can see through the tall, heavy iron grill gates. Whenever the black Mercedes leaves or arrives, two women, the housemaids, wearing their soft pink gingham uniforms, come out to open them. The odd times, the houseboy or the gardener opens the gates.

Inside, the big house sits in the middle of the grounds. Tall, lush fruit trees surround and obscure the house from outside view, most notably an ancient mango tree that bears fruit all year round. The branches that grow outside of the fence are devoid of fruits as the townspeople passing by would have picked them. Inside, however, clusters of large carabao mangoes await to be picked. One rule the owners have: one can pick the fruits growing beyond the fence, but one cannot reach over to pick the fruits inside.

The roof is of red Spanish tiles, the color having faded long ago. Three large windows span the width of the house, and their height almost reaches the ceiling. The top parts have wooden spindles about a foot long. The sliding closures of the main window frame are made of slats of wood and flattened sea shells. The bottom part, below the sill, have intricately carved wooden spindles. These, too, have their own sliding closures. Sometimes you see a small child sitting on the floor looking through whenever one of the closures is open.

A large bush of bougainvillas, lush with red and pink flowers obscure the view of the entrance to the house. But on part of the wrap around porch, there is a pair of white wicker chairs with cushions in colourful flower prints, and a small white wicker table with a glass top. A woman's reading glasses lie on top of a book on the table.

The paved walkway from the gate to the entrance of the house is lined with low flowering plants, in shades complementing the flowers of the bougainvillas.

You hear the dogs barking, German shepherds, three of them. They roam the grounds at night, keeping guard, just in case some foolish thief would actually scale the protective fencing.

Who lives in this house?

QUESTION: did you ever wish you had children?

someone asked me this just a few days ago. that wasn't the first time the question had been thrown at me. sometimes it irritated me to be asked this, but once or twice, like last week, made me stop and think: did i ever?

at age 7, i resolved i would not marry nor have children. what inspired that? first, myself. although i consider NOW my childhood to be okay, the really bad experiences (though now i can admit to be relatively few - a year) just seem to stick out. all my life i was the bad daughter, the hard headed one, the talkative one, the complainer, the inquisitive in a bad way daughter, or, get this, the ugly daughter. i think that justified my feeling of being "unloved" all through my childhood. they say that your parents are your best model for raising children. i didn't like the way i was raised, but then again, my parents raised me the way they were raised by their own parents who knew no better. and would i have wanted to raise a child the way i was raised?

second, there were couples, friends and acquaintances and neighbours, even relatives, that left such bad impressions on me. typically, husband drank, beat wife, sometimes didn't work. typically, wife tended to drunk husband, accepted the beating, sometimes became breadwinner, while husband drank, beat wife and didn't work. that's the best scenario. the worst was husband drank, beat wife, didn't work and had mistress or mistresses. and i heard the adults say love is blind, so wife continued to be a wife and did such silly things as tending the drunk husband, accepting the beating from the drunk husband, work till lazy drunk husband found work (and more often than not the lazy bastard seeing it was much easier for stupid wife to earn a living for the whole family than him just decided to not work anymore),and on rare occasions, raising children of stupid drunk husband from slut mistress(es).

at four years old, i was already doing household chores and taking care of my younger siblings. i didn't have time to be a child. i grew up watching the neighborhood children doing things children do, play and have fun. one day i played tag with the neighborhood children and they laughed at me because i ran around wearing my slippers. they were all barefoot. so i took off my slippers and ran around in the dirt. what did i get for doing that? a good beating. so i stopped playing with them. the best way to avoid getting beat up by your father was to not do anything to displease him. so if i would have a child, what children thing could i teach him/her or let him/her do? and that's why i didn't want to have children.

was there a time i wished i had a child? yes, twice in fact. the first child i would have named "ingrid hortense". yes, i was pretty sure if i had been pregnant, i would've had a baby girl. i was so in love with this man i was ready to get pregnant. but it didn't happen of course. and of course, i was disappointed.

the second time, she would've been named "francesca". with another man i was so in love with. at the time. you must know, i have been in love so many times, but only twice was i willing to go all the way, i.e., get married and bear children (maximum of two, of course).

so, did i ever wish i had children? maybe i did. but thank god, i didn't.