Old Technology

Your cassette deck chews the ribbon
Half a sentence, then it stops
I turn the counter back to zero
Watch the red display blink off

The answering machine keeps breathing
Three green lights against the wall
Your voice is buried under hiss now
But I still know the final call

I press rewind, I press repeat
A little ghost beneath the beat

Old technology, carry me through
A broken signal still leads me to you
On a monochrome screen, your name stays blue
Old technology, what else can I do?

The fax machine spits out a weather map
From a town we left behind
A dot-matrix printer counts the minutes
One black line at a time

I keep your pager in a desk drawer
Its dead battery turned to dust
Every number looks important
Every promise ends in rust

I press rewind, I press repeat
Your vanished pulse beneath the beat

Old technology, carry me through
A broken signal still leads me to you
On a monochrome screen, your name stays blue
Old technology, what else can I do?

If the hard drive wakes at midnight
If the modem finds a line
Let it send one final message
Let it tell me you were mine

Old technology, carry me through
A broken signal still leads me to you
On a monochrome screen, your name stays blue
Old technology, what else can I do?

The tape runs out, the room goes still
The little red light waits until