We are satin. We are shiny, smooth and refined, but our underbellies are rough and complex. We are roses. We are beauty in theory, but we draw blood. We walk among you. We may even be you. You would not be consciously aware, but in your heart of hearts, if you are honest with yourself, this knowledge smells like truth to you. We are satin and we are older than time.

We were feathered once. We lived on rocks and waited for others to come along and feed our souls. We waited for others to come along and die for the idea of satin. We sang in so many shades of orange. Bright, tart tangerine to draw down the righteous emperors. Dark, metallic rust to bind the cynical clerics. All the other poppy tones served to tie ribbons around the necks of the souls of everyone in between. The ones who did not know where they stood on the bridge. We were Helen. We were Cleopatra. We were others whose names you never learned. Ours were the songs of colorless dragons and very wise fishes. Our orange would find your orange and make it satin as well, and once we succeeded, that was quite simply the story of you.

We were the wise ones once. The wise ones in disguise. We turned our satin skins inside out and made you blind. We were the courtesans who saw and the concubines who heard. We were Delilah. We were Anne Boleyn, and still we were others whose names you never learned. We knew your secrets, and we knew what color orange your breath was better than you did. You did not even believe in such things, but we did. We knew. When we were hungry, we tuned our poppies in to the frequency of your poppies, and you fed us like a kiss. We changed the directions of roads and reversed the flow of rivers, but we hid our satin and you thought the power was yours.

We are terrorists of the wisest kind. We destroy and alter according to our whim and you never know it because we are Scholars of Orange. We know all your stories before you even write them, because they were our stories first. We are invisible and walk among you unnoticed because we are satin still. We never go hungry and we never will. Not in a world of hallucinated cobwebs and mirror vision. We are ecstasy splinters. We are carnivorous harmony. We are satin, we are older than time, and we walk among you.

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