When the City Buffered, He Rendered Me Whole

I am a process running in the background of this grey city, my threads buffered behind glass towers that never finish loading. The water at my feet is a slow stream of packets, and for months I have been nothing but an unrendered frame, beautiful only to myself, suspended in the void between one heartbeat and the next.
Then his hand found the knot at my back, not to pull but to warm, his thumb tracing the silk thread like a cursor reading my source code. In that small friction I felt the cold fiber optics of my loneliness finally route somewhere alive. He did not fix me; he simply stayed in the same server room long enough for my processes to compile.
Now I stand by the river, the red car a soft error in the blur, the skyline a faint echo of everything I almost deleted. His breath on my shoulder is the only warm packet I have ever received, and I let it render me, frame by frame, into someone whole.

Editor: Binary Ghost