Carne que se pudre (Esp- Eng) Rotting meat

*I tried to reply to your message, but this is what came out instead. I wrote it all at once; it was born misshapen, but it had a breath, and it aims to endure, to be a testament to our thinking.

To the message within the message. To @wakeupkitty

Father, now they are recruiting soldiers. They send them off to war and they come back without limbs. Without life, with only a faint glow behind their lobes and threads of drool hanging from their mouths. They look like automatons, covered in lacerations, and they force a metal tag into their mouths with a name and an infernal number. Death itself comes looking for these poor sons. It restores them with smoke and incense. The silence is terrifying, Father.

There are hundreds of corpses to cover, among sewers, rotten legumes, and cries for help. War carries the stench of gunpowder and broken hearts; it seeps into fabric, skin, memory.

People keep disappearing, Father. They are found rotten and without organs. Their diluted lucidity as fragile, deformed beings is stolen from them.

People scream, scream again. They pour into the streets. They beat spoons and iron. Darkness answers; hunger walks beside them. It forces them into the unspeakable.

Knives are used. Incense is used. Mothers march; the numbers are unreal. They never tell what it feels like, deep inside the heart.

The wind is leaden, hateful. People, Father, are afraid—not of death, but of silence.

They burn tires, spreading through the streets like a silent plague. They dare to write signs, as if life itself were pointing a gun. Daring to pull the trigger, without time, without anguish.

Only dirty walls remain. They wash the walls and restore their shine. They steal whatever can still be used from the cemeteries. The sacred means very little to them. They are idiots who leave for war or return from it, but without light, with trepanation scars or metallic arms where flesh once rotted.

Father, you can wash their hands. Pray. Some lost their faith—they stole it from them, they stole their lives. They drank unblessed water from puddles filled with corpses.

We stepped on mines; skin peeled away from bone. And they made us believe the enemy were beasts. That they did not bleed, that they took away our sons, Father. But it was not true. They bled. They were like us.

From other cities. With pregnant wives about to give birth.

Some cut off their own arms and legs just to escape. To be far away, back home again, without smiles.

But nothing was the same anymore. Not after seeing so much.

And your body returned like a marionette, soulless, ticking with gears inside. Broken clocks. Shattered things. Eyes without light.

Father, pray hard. For those who no longer can. For those who still remain.

Padre, y ahora están reclutando soldados.
Los mandan a la guerra y vuelven sin miembros. Sin vida, un brillo tenue detrás de los lóbulos y les cuelgan hilos de baba. Parecen autómatas, tienen laceraciones y les introducen en la boca una chapilla con el nombre y un número infernal. La muerte viene en persona a buscar estos hijos pobres. Les restaura con humo e inciensos. El silencio es aterrador padre.
Son cientos de cadáveres que arropar, entre alcantarillas, legumbres podridas y gritos de auxilio. La guerra tiene un hedor a pólvora y corazones rotos; se impregna en los tejidos, la piel, el recuerdo.
Siguen desapareciendo gentes, padre.
Los encuentran sin órganos y podridos.
Les roban su diluida lucides de seres quebradizos y deformes.
La gente grita, regrita.
Se tiran a las calles. Suenan con cucharas y fierros.
La oscuridad responde; el hambre los acompaña. Los obliga a lo indecible.
Se usan cuchillos.
Se usa incienso.
Las madres desfilan, los números son irreales.
No cuentan lo que se siente, corazón adentro.
El viento es plomizo, odioso.
La gente, Padre, tiene miedo, no a la muerte, tiene miedo del silencio.
Incendian neumáticos, se esparcen por las calles como una plaga silenciosa.
Se atreven a escribir carteles, como si la vida fuera apuntarse una pistola.
Atreverse a disparar, sin tiempo, sin angustias.
Solo quedan paredes sucias.
Lavan las paredes, les restituyen el brillo.
Roban lo utilizable de los cementerios. Les importa muy poco lo sagrado. Son idiotas que parten a la guerra o vuelven, pero sin brillo, con trepanación o brazos metálicos donde antes tenían carne que se pudre.
Padre, usted puede lavarles las manos. Rezar.
Algunos perdieron la fe, se las robaron, les robaron la vida, tomaron agua no bendita, de charcos con cadáveres.
Pisábamos minas; la piel se despegaba de los huesos.
Y nos hicieron creer que el enemigo eran bestias. Que no sangraban, que se llevaban a nuestros hijos, Padre. No era cierto. Sangraban. Eran como nosotros.
De otras ciudades. Con esposas embarazadas, a punto de dar a luz.
Algunos se cercenaban los brazos, las piernas para escapar. Estar lejos, de regreso, sin sonrisas.
Pero ya no era igual. No después de ver tanto.
Y regresaba tu cuerpo, como una marioneta, sin alma, tictaqueando con engranajes dentro. Relojes rotos, quebrados, ojos sin luz.
Padre, rece mucho. Por los que no pueden. Por los que siguen.

The image was created by me, based on a specific prompt I gave to chatGpt.