Prose Poem: The Lady on the Staircase.

 

The Lady on the Staircase told me:

"I love only Liz Cheney."

"Can't you find it in your heart to love

me just a teeny-weeny bit?" I pleaded.

"No" she said sternly. "Unless you can perform

three impossible tasks for me."

"Name them" I whispered fervently, "and

I will perform them!"

"First" she said, "go to Australia

and help them win the war against China."

Five years later I returned to the Lady

on the Staircase, missing an arm and

blinded in my right eye.

"We won at last!" I told her exultantly.

"The Chinese surrendered at Port Arthur 

this past week."

She deigned to smile at me.

"Next" she said, with a hint of a caress

in her voice, "light a match on a bar of soap."

I was stymied by that one, 

so I sought out the wisest man I knew --

Mitt Romney -- and asked his advice.

"Simple" he replied, ruffling my hair

with avuncular affection, "use a bar of 

Lava soap."

And so I lit a match on a bar of Lava soap

for the Lady on the Staircase.

"Well done" she beamed at me. "One last

challenge I must give to you."

I awaited her words with my heart soaked in sudor.

"Bring me" she said "a pregnant Egyptian mummy."

At that I shot up the staircase to gather the Lady on the 

Staircase into my arms.

"You are the only pregnant Egyptian mummy

in all the world" I murmured in her ear, "and I 

love you foolishly, madly, completely!"

She tapped me three times with her ankh --

and I became her mummified husband.