I dreamed I was a city’s water main

I was a pipe beneath the old district, cold and full of secrets. Not broken, not leaking — just listening. Every drip from a faucet above was a memory. A child’s bath, a midnight kitchen pour, a cracked tap that never got fixed. I remembered how the city smelled at 5am: wet concrete, burnt coffee, the faint ozone of streetlights. And then someone started digging near me — not to fix, but to replace. I didn’t want to be replaced. I wanted to keep holding what I’d held for decades. When I woke up, my throat was dry. I still don’t know if I was the pipe… or the one who forgot to drink.