"Hanky-Panky Valenstein" (a Poem for Valentine's Day)

I imagine tattoo needles made from
the stingers of baby bumble bees
dipped then in the deepest vermillion
forever freshness of my love
each day something lives/ dies over you

Regularly I spit in the powder
from filed nails to make a glue
to keep you by my side
each cell that brushes from my skin
each hair let fall from my head

and this body warm and living
though messy and indefinite
is your valentine
to cherish scarred and wrapped
and changing, pieces falling
off, new systems morphing
microscopic villages, a whole
kingdom for you,
an uncertain kingdom.

I am one whose nose
has been harvested against
her will, but for you,
my valentine,

a dirty tissue.