Fermat's Last Theorem by Julia Mishkin

I dream of you lost in a daze, having gazed too long

at the sun—you believe your life has been overtaken

by number theory, and though I don’t understand probability

you say my failure is one of perspective: how can that

object blocking the light be a girl sitting in the window

braiding and unbraiding her hair, and what happens

when it spills over? (A) It obscures the ladder she uses

to climb up and down at night, or (B) She’s dreaming

of you dreaming underwater. The truth about Fermat

is that he left no proof of the conjecture for all n,

but did prove the special case n = 4 (illustrations follow):

the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse racing out of frame

for some unnamed destination; Bartok’s 4^th Quartet

with its furious pizzicato turning the Hungarian forest

sinister; Murdoch’s The Bell, whose characters’ moral

confusion mirrors my own doubts about the 1940s, when

my grandfather had the nous to invest in hand-churned

ice-cream machines and Chanel. In Chinese numerology

the word four is a homonym of the word for death

(why some Chinese hospitals don’t have a 4th floor,

and why I check out of Suite #4 at the Grand Park Xian).

I visit the Museum of Terra Cotta Warriors and Horses instead

(touted as the “Eighth and Best Wonder of the World”).

It seems only fitting to dream in 4-part harmony when

fleeing this world for a brighter one: Check all your razors

and your guns, do the Shim-Sham Shimmy till the rising sun.