dash or something else?

I don’t remember the food we ate, but I do remember the light–the faint rays of January afternoon sunlight.

(Would a comma, instead of the dash, be better?)

 

I don’t remember the food we ate, but I do remember the light–the faint rays of January afternoon sunlight.

I don't know why, but that doesn't sound right to me...Why not just say 'but I do remember the the faint rays of the January afternoon sunlight.'
I know you weren't asking for that, but I thought i'd put it out there xD

 

Use an 'em dash' if you want the reader to take a long pause -- this is appropriate here imho.

 

-- is only used in a ms, to show that an em dash is wanted there... if it's not for a ms, the actual dash should be used...

that said, i'd use a comma there, not a dash...

 

Better for what? Either would be fine but the resulting pacing of the sentence would be different. It's a question of how you want to pace that sentence in the context of all of the other sentences around. For the sentence in isolation, I prefer the em-dash. More wistful.