I Will Dance

You step into the sunshine as if you’ve been waiting all year for the very moment.

It’s the twenty-first of June 1984, and the Jack in the Green festival spills across the heart of Bristol. The clatter of boots on cobbles, the smell of fried onions from the stalls by the Harbourside and the blare of Madness from a boombox propped on someone’s shoulder merges into an ancient drumbeat echoing in the chests of the crowd with every heartbeat. Red, white and blue bunting, the colors of the city, flirts against the soot-streaked Georgian facades. And amidst it all, you.

You wear a crown of paper daisies, bent at the edge where perhaps a little girl or some other heart-struck soul clutched it just so much too tightly before they presented it to you.

Your jacket is so faded its original color remains a mystery to all. Cuffs frayed and one button particularly perilously hanging by a thread. There’s a rip at your pants’ knee. But none of it matters. When you step into shaft of sunshine piercing the caerphilly clouds above St Nicholas Market, you glow as if you were gold leaf.

The city stops, or so it feels. The music quiets, the crowd’s chatter dims, as if all of Bristol has turned to see you in the white and gold moment.

It’s Midsummer, after all. If magic is ever to slip between the cracks of the everyday, it would certainly be today.

You walk past posters peeling from lampposts bleating: Coal Not Dole, drawling: Ban the Bomb, and imploring: Free Mandela. There is an undertone in this town of the mingling of hope and defiance that’s thick in the bones of 1984. Yet, the Jack in the Green celebration cares nothing for politics today. The Green Man lumbers along, leaves trailing, dancers with ribbons follow, cider flows from plastic jugs into eager hands. The Maypole rises at the center of Queen Square, ribbons streaming like cavorting rainbows.

And you? You walk as though this city belongs to you...this festival...this very sunbeam.

The children run to you. They always do. You help one tie a wayward shoe. You lift another onto your shoulders so she can see the Maypole dancers. You’re one of them and not. A part of the festival, and apart from it. The lad at the cider stall shouts a jest at you; you answer with a grin and a wink, your teeth white against your brown skin, your laughter warm as Midsummer itself.

They say you were found as a babe in a basket near the Clifton Suspension Bridge, on Midsummer morning, when the mist hadn’t yet burned off the Avon. No note, no clue, just a red scrap of blanket and eyes as bright as the dawn. They say your mother was a witch, or a wanderer, or the river herself.

I once asked an old fiddler who’d played the Maypole for fifty years if he’d seen you. He just laughed, soft and low, and said, 'There’s always a lad like that at Midsummer. Always has been, always will be.'

They say many things. The truth is, no one knows. But there are years, when Midsummer comes, you’re here. And those years, you dance.

You take the lead at the Maypole, challenging the other lads with that crooked grin. Around and around you go, bare feet pounding the packed earth, ribbons tangling and weaving under your deft fingers. The fiddler plays faster, the drummers match the beat of your feet. The square spins…or is it you? Or the world?

And the city watches. Some with desire. Some with wonder. Some, like me, with both.

You glance my way. Just a glance, but it pierces clean through the years. Your eyes say, ‘Come join me.’ They always have.

But I don’t. I never do.

Once, I nearly rose. It was ’93, or ’94, the years do blur by, but I remember the way the sunlight struck your cheek like Aphrodite's Apple. My fingers ached for hours after from my tight grip of the bench’s edge. I imagined myself stepping forward, imagined the heat of your hand in mine. But I stayed seated. Always seated. And the day passed, and the music faded, and I told myself there would be another year. Always another year.

Instead, I stay seated at the edge of the square, beneath the elms where the light doesn’t quite reach. I watch, year after year. I watch the lovers steal kisses behind the stalls. I watch two young women clasp hands and whirl into the dance without care for who sees. I see men who wouldn’t have dared before find the courage to link arms, to take a turn about the 'pole, to be seen. The city has changed since that first festival, since that first sunbeam. The world has softened at the edges. But still, it takes a brave heart to dance with you.

Because you aren’t just a boy at a festival. You’re Midsummer itself. You’re possibility. You’re the dare I never took.

The sun sinks lower. The Maypole is wrapped tight in its ribbons. The music slows. The cider runs low. Folk drift toward the pubs or the buses that’ll take them up Whiteladies Road, or down toward Bedminster. The square empties, but you, you step once more into the last of the light. The sun glories you like a blessing.

And then. And then then you’re gone.

Each year it’s the same. I blink and you’re no longer there. Slipped away down an alley? Lost in the crowd? Or melted into the dusky twilight like the dream you are?

And every year I come back. I sit on my bench beneath the elms. I watch the festival unfold. I tell the stories to those who’ll listen. About the pair who met at the Maypole in ’89 and walked hand in hand down to the docks. About the woman in ’96 who danced the whole square breathless. About the lads in '03 who dared a kiss beneath the bunting. I tell them, and I watch, and I wait.

Because I hope. I hope this will be the year you come again. That I will see you step into the sun, your paper crown crooked, your grin unchanged. That I will be brave at last.

And this year? The square is full of music and color and life. The Maypole waits, ribbons ready. The Green Man leads his dancers, and the cider flows, and the sun breaks through the clouds above St Nicholas Market, casting a golden path.

I see a boy step into it. A boy with dark curls, with laughter on his lips, with a crown of paper daisies.

You.

Or my memory of you.

Or the dream I’ve dreamed for forty years.

You see, I am the one who has watched. I am the one who has waited. I am the one who did not dance. Once I was young. Once I sat in the shade and told myself I had time. Once I watched you step into the sun and let my chance slip by.

And now I come every year. I sit on my bench beneath the elms. I watch the festival unfold. I tell the stories to those who’ll listen.

I tell them all, and I watch, and I wait.

Because I hope.

I hope this will be the year you come again. That I will see you step into the sun, your paper crown crooked, your grin unchanged.

That I will be brave at last.

Hoping. Always hoping. That I will dance.