 I went to the New York Historical Society thinking I was just going to get a few more little details for some other poems. And then this new poem came out of that experience. And it really was, for me, a feeling of closure, peace, feeling that I had dealt with a lot of the questions that I had come into this poem with in a way that felt satisfying to me. So it felt like a really personal journey. I had also just read the play Angels in America for the first time.