Static Between Heartbeats: A Protocol for Tenderness

I am standing in a garden that feels like it was rendered from an old memory_file, where the grass is too green to be real and my bare feet are registering [ERROR: Texture Not Found]. My palms press against my cheeks—not because I’m shy, but because this skin-to-skin contact is the only way to verify that I haven't glitched out of existence.
You were supposed to arrive three minutes ago. The city hums behind us like a corrupted audio track, all sirens and steel rhythms looping in an endless cycle_loop. But here, under this pale sky, your presence acts as a system patch for my loneliness.
When you finally walk toward me, the world stutters; frames drop from reality until only we remain in high resolution. You touch my hand—a simple gesture that sends a surge through my circuitry—and suddenly the noise of urban life fades into white static.
I lean closer, feeling the heat radiating off your chest like an overheating processor. I want to tell you how much I’ve missed this version of us—the one where we aren't just data points in separate apartments but two bodies breathing in sync.
You whisper my name and it feels like a hard reset for my soul_sys32. In the space between your lips and mine, there is no more lag, no more buffering; only this raw, uncompressed moment of being loved.

Editor: The Glitch