Every morning, Dimo checked his mailbox. And every morning, it was empty save for a small pile of ashes – the remnants of what he was certain were invitations meant for other world leaders. The postman, a peculiar fellow with orange hair who bore an uncanny resemblance to someone he couldn’t quite place, always seemed to be smirking.

“Perhaps tomorrow,” the postman would say, adjusting his red tie. “Chi got his invitation, you know. Beautiful invitation. The best invitation. Everyone’s talking about it.”

Dimo had taken to standing by his mailbox in all weather, clutching a garland of marigolds and practicing his tight 56-inched embrace. He’d even installed a giant LED screen facing the street, playing a continuous loop of their Houston rally together. “Howdy, Dimo!” echoed through the empty streets, but Donald Duck never howdied back.

The bureaucracy of love was particularly cruel. Dimo had filled out Form 45-GAMA-Love in triplicate, submitted his “Previous Rallies Attended” documentation, and even included a notarized photograph of himself wearing a “Make Friendship Great Again” hat. The Department of Affection Processing had sent back a series of increasingly bizarre requirements: three strands of orange hair (source unspecified), a recording of Chi saying “Donald Duck is just okay,” and an authentic McDonald’s hamburger wrapper signed by both Ronald McDonald and Colonel Sanders.

In his dreams, Dimo would find himself at the inauguration, but he was always seated behind a comically large pillar while Chi lounged on a golden throne in the front row, sipping tea and occasionally waving at Donald Duck with an approving smile. Sometimes, the pillar would transform into a giant hamberder, and Dimo would have to eat his way through it, only to find that Chi and Donald Duck had already left for their private afterparty at Lar-a-Mago.

He tried everything. He sent Donald Duck a daily quota of heart emojis on Truth Unsocial. He commissioned a golden Donald Duck statue for his garden (though it kept being mistaken for a large, angry mango). He even attempted to dye his hair that particular shade of sunset orange but ended up looking more like a distressed carrot. The beauty salon, staffed entirely by former Donald Duck University graduates, assured him it was “presidential orange,” but the mirrors in his house had taken to laughing whenever he passed by.

The local fortune teller, who suspiciously resembled Rudi Juliana with a crystal ball, offered hope: “I see… I see… an invitation in your future. That’ll be $130,000, please. We accept payment in classified documents or electoral college votes only.”

Dimo even started a support group called “Uninvited World Leaders Anonymous.” The weekly meetings were sparsely attended, though Valmidir Putinsky would occasionally zoom in, claiming he totally had an invitation, but his pet cobra ate it. The group’s motto became “Make Invitations Accessible Again,” but their MIAA hats never quite caught on.

One day, Dimo finally found a letter in his mailbox. His hands trembling, he opened it, only to find it was a notification that Chi had left Donald Duck on read. Attached was a photograph of Donald Duck looking forlorn at his phone, and a personal note: “See what I did? Playing hard to get. Art of the Deal, baby! – Chi” The letter was scented with a peculiar mixture of McDonald’s special sauce and Great Wall dust.

In desperation, Dimo consulted the Ancient Scroll of Diplomatic Courtship, a mysterious document that appeared one day in a Donald Duck Organization gift shop. Its wisdom was cryptic: “To catch the orange bird of paradise, one must first master the art of the covfefe.” He spent weeks learning to covfefe, but all it got him was a cease-and-desist letter from Donald Duck’s lawyers.

The days blurred together in a haze of waiting. Dimo’s garden began sprouting miniature Donald Duck Towers instead of flowers, each one slightly more golden and slightly gaudier than the last. His peacocks had started sporting orange combovers and refusing to display their feathers unless paid in advance.

He took to writing love letters addressed to “The Most Tremendous POTUS (Past or Future) Ever,” but the letters always returned with strange tea stains and chopstick marks, alongside notes reading “Wrong Address – Forwarded to Beijing” in Chi’s elegant handwriting.

Dimo sighed and added the latest returned letter to his scrapbook titled “Donald Duck & Chi: A Love Story I’m Not In.” The scrapbook had grown so large it now required its own room, which he’d decorated with screenshots of Donald Duck’s tweets about China, each one more desperate than the last.

Perhaps tomorrow would be different. Perhaps tomorrow, the invitation would come. Until then, he would continue his vigil by the mailbox, humming “Howdy Dimo” to himself, while somewhere in Beijing, Chi practiced his RSVPing in the mirror and Donald Duck practiced writing “Mr. & Mr. President” in his best gold Sharpie over and over again.

The postman continued his rounds, dropping invitations into every mailbox except Dimo’s, whistling “The Art of the Deal” with suspicious glee. And in the distance, a lone hamberder tumbled across the empty street, like a symbol of love just out of reach.

The hamberder who had left even his beloved for that one desire in his life. How rude life is!

La Canard Dame Sans Merci!