I received the idea for this poem when attempting to relive my visit to Pompeii many years ago. While I was there, I remembered being startled, despite learning briefly about it in school, at the measure of the intactness of the buildings. There was a real story - really multiple intricate and intertwining stories - that had been covered by ash and sulfur and unearthed over centuries and yet for all we had found so much had been lost. After drafting the poem and rereading it, we found a second, unintentional connection to Pompeii: it seemed I had been writing about a fire the entire time.