Slapped by the past

I make no claims of goodness for the following poem - I'm just shocked by it, shocked that I wrote it in 2004 about someone who is in no way important to me now.  I'm cleaning out a box I thought was just pictures and instead it has a bunch of emails and letters and fragments of stories and poems I wrote over the past 15 years.  I'm sad in some ways how much doesn't change, glad at how much does. 

I really thought this poem was about someone else, then I found a date on an earlier draft, March/April 2004 and realized who it must be about.  Apparently my feelings about anyone who has ever dumped me are interchangable.  Though I suppose that's true for all of us up to a point.

So:
Villanelle for the One Who Moved On

Elliptical and sly, he comes alight
and all that danger howling in his eyes
keeps counting up the fierce price of delight.

He snakes his way past your defences' height
and dances there a while, to your surprise.
Elliptical and sly, his eyes alight.

His words are cardinals, his thoughts a kite
to lift you double-winged in rash surmise,
but surely there's a price for wild delight.

The bastard went and turned your pastels bright
with all his tumbling words that seemed unwise,
elliptical and shy, you flamed alight.

How will you pay?  Your courage is too slight
you cannot hock the flattery once it dies.
Can you afford the price of such delight?

You hate the final stanza turns out trite
as: woman mourns and pays, man finds new skies.
elliptical and sly, he blazed alight
and never paid a dime. What price delight!