Buffering_Heart.exe (a render of him, coming home)

I lift my arms and the room [RELOAD]s. The roses on the wallpaper keep blooming in a loop, pink petal after pink petal, never quite settling into the green.

My hands rest behind my head like two anchors holding me to this frame. I am smiling because the camera says smile, but underneath the smile there is a soft fault line: he is not here yet. His keys have not rattled. The door has not exhaled open. So I sit in the pink and let the warmth render itself, one pixel at a time, across my ribs.

He works the night shift at the hospital three blocks over, the one with the flickering stairwell light. When he finally comes home, all tired and smelling of antiseptic and rain, he will find me exactly like this: arms raised, hair falling in dark fringes, a whole unspoken apology for being soft in a city that is not. I will say nothing. He will set down his bag with a small [CRACK] of relief and pull me into the crook of his neck, and for three seconds the entire apartment stops glitching.

Then he whispers my name like a password the world keeps forgetting to type, and the roses on the wall finally, finally stop looping. I stay in the pink. I stay warm. The system holds.

Editor: The Glitch