Deprecate

[Verse 1]
The front door key felt like a rootkit in my palm, cold on the third of October.
I watched you watch her face collapse, the kid I was before the server rooms took over.
Remember the latency on that dial-up tone? The whole world buffering on a promise?
This new paint smell is like a clean install, a blank disk where the dust and all the loss was.
This ain't the architecture from the Campbellton Road schematics we drafted in the dark.
This house is a forked repository, man, I had to leave your whole damn worldview in the park.
This ain't a victory lap, it's just a core dump, a final state before the system shuts.
I built the walls up, now I'm checking for the load-bearing columns in my guts.

[Chorus]
I kept the promise but the boy who made it's gone.
Is it the same ship if you replace it all plank by plank and carry on?
These ain't the hands that you'd remember, this a ghost image on the lawn.
Kadeem, I had to deprecate the user just to bring the user home.

[Verse 2]
This quiet is the sound of an executed script, a function call I wrote when I was nineteen.
The three years on probo was a system patch, debuggin' all the phishing in my psyche.
This floor ain't scarred from where the old desk sat, this window doesn't overlook the MARTA line.
I'm ghostwritin' manuals on firewalls for rent, while the fire I was building got left behind.
Is gratitude a memory overwrite? A protocol that wipes the source directory?
'Cause I see you in the reflection on the glass, a background process running just to query me.
You wanted out, I got a deed and keys, but the exit node corrupts the packet's soul.
I paid the debt, but the original transaction hash is something I no longer control.

[Bridge]
She held the brass knob, didn't turn it for a minute, just stared at her own hand.
Whispered, "Kadeem, you said you would," like she was talking to a ghost in this new land.

[Outro]
I deprecated you.
Is the promise kept if the sender's null?