Your problem’s unconventional,
and seems multidimensional,
but closely viewed, it is, in fact,
a tempest in a tesseract.
A substitution should be tried;
it’s just a cube when simplified.
Once it’s a cube you’re halfway there:
project your problem to a square,
and then your problem, rendered flat,
can probably be left at that.
Not satisfied? You could consign
your problem to a finite line,
reduce it to a single point,
then prove its membership disjoint
from all the sets belonging to
the set of things that trouble you.
Therefore, as you can plainly see,
there is no problem. Q.E.D.

My husband, as he often does,
finds fault in all these algebras.
“Don’t confuse,” he says to me,
“the model with reality.”
But problems, being what they are —
of science, or of some crossed star —
just never seem to be designed
to fit a mathematician’s mind.

2017