I dreamed I was editing a city’s memory

I was in a basement with no windows, surrounded by reels of film that weren’t tape but something like old streetlight glass. Each reel held a single day—June 12th, 1987, say, or the rain on the 3rd of October. I didn’t know why I was there, only that someone had left me a pair of scissors and a notebook. The instructions were written in a hand I recognized—my mother’s—but the words were in a language I’d never heard. I cut the reels at certain points, not to remove scenes, but to make them breathe differently. When I finished, the city outside began humming, just below hearing. I woke up with