Orange holds my story. Orange is my delight, no matter how illogical it seems. Delight is small, fragile, chosen. It lives between the moments that might go unnoticed if you don’t look closely. Delight, sometimes, hides in something as simple as a color, a mere reflection of light.
My favorite color is orange. My favorite reflection is orange. Orange is one of the first ways to know me. It draws my eyes, sparks my quiet joy, and reflects my inner life. Yet no one can prove the orange I see is the same orange someone else sees. My orange carries warmth, memory, or longing no one else perceives. Still, it reveals me.
When I was thirteen, I began to see the parallel between orange and myself. In 2020, during COVID-19, the world fell into a quietness I wasn’t prepared for. I was separated from the friends and moments I depended on, and I had always been the type of person who came alive around others. Their laughter felt like purpose, their happiness something I could hold onto. But alone in that stillness, without those connections, I was left to face myself. The silence pressed in heavier than I expected, and the bright yellow I once loved no longer felt like enough. It was too simple, too light for what I was beginning to feel. I realized I was not only bright. There was depth in me, something more layered, more complicated, just as real as my joy. That was when orange began to make sense. It held what I couldn’t name, my happiness woven quietly through my sadness, the two existing together without asking either to disappear.
Sunsets hold light and shadow together without forcing one to overpower the other. I remember walking in Atlanta one evening, and the sky was spilling into shades of orange and gold, and it felt like the kind of quiet that isn’t empty but full. I felt the warmth on my skin, the faint scent of the evening air, and the hum of distant traffic softened by the stillness. The day was ending, but it wasn’t sad; it was soft, layered, still glowing even as the light began to fade. I watched how the colors blended without urgency, how nothing had to rush or prove itself. Now, every time I see a sunset, I feel that same quiet sadness, but it isn’t heavy. It lingers gently, reminding me that something can be ending and still be beautiful, that there is meaning even in fading light. In that balance, I recognized myself. Even in loneliness, I still carried warmth. I didn’t have to be only joy or only hurt. I could be both and still glow.
Orange was not even named for itself. For a long time, English speakers didn’t have a separate word for it; it was called “yellow red.” Only after the fruit arrived, the color borrowed its name. It did not belong in its own category. It became one. Orange is the literal mix of red and yellow, fire and sun, passion and hope. It is the in-between, never as sharp as red, never as soft as yellow. It burns, but it glows. It feels deeply but chooses joy anyway. It exists in motion, in transformation, in becoming. It holds intensity without consuming it.
I feel intensely. I have always felt intensely. Sometimes, like a burst of orange in a gray room, impossible to ignore, impossible to contain. My notebook is filled with scribbled thoughts, half-drawn sketches, and ideas that I can never let go of. I fidget with my necklaces, bite my fingernails, and speak at a pace that my mind can’t keep up with. I am aware of being too much, too loud in thought, too sharp in feeling, too full to fit neatly anywhere. I have always been someone who feels first and understands later. My hope flares like sunlight through smoke; my passion burns like autumn leaves. And sometimes, that fire leaves me exhausted and hollow, wishing I could be quieter, softer, less.
I move through the world carrying myself in layers: the red of my anger, the yellow of my hope, the orange of everything in between. I am a sister, a friend, my mother’s daughter, and the child of a man who left. Each relationship reveals something but leaves me unseen. How could anyone truly know me when I am more than just a role, more than a relation? My intensity, my depth, my too-muchness, they live in the spaces between these connections, in the light that only I carry.
My father was never present. He left my family when I was only three years old, leaving a quiet emptiness I didn’t know how to fill. I realized over time that I resembled him in ways my mother did not. She saw in me the parts of him she had struggled with, and I saw in myself a reflection of someone I barely knew. When I listen to Tyler, the Creator’s song “Like Him,” I feel that ache of his absence, the pull of resemblance, and the complicated longing for a connection that was never there. My father’s absence left me searching, trying to understand who I was, independent of the people I came from, piecing together my identity from fragments of myself that were neither entirely my mother’s nor entirely his. Even in his absence, something in me still burns like him, unfamiliar, but undoubtedly mine.
Adefolake is the literal definition of care. In Yoruba, a Nigerian language, it means “God cares for.” I have always been a so-called people pleaser, the kind of person who loves loudly and without hesitation. When I’m shopping and see one of my friend’s favorite things, I try to buy it and surprise them with it. Even if I don’t buy it, I send them a picture just saying it reminded me of them. I send people paragraphs to tell them how much they mean to me. Any way I can show I care, I do it. But there was a time when my care felt misplaced. Throughout high school, my best friend and I used to share everything, inside jokes, routines, and small rituals that made ordinary days feel important. Then, in our senior year, without warning, she stopped speaking to me—no argument, no explanation, just distance. I kept showing up the only way I knew how. I smiled when I saw her. I always said hello first. I repeated our old jokes, hoping something familiar would soften the silence. Instead, she pulled further away; what I deemed loyalty felt like pressure to her. What I meant as love felt like too much. And slowly, I began to understand my intensity, unmeasured and unmuted, had overwhelmed the space between us. Even in the warmth of my care, I had to learn how to glow without burning.
For a long time, I thought my brightness was dependent on who stood beside me. When someone pulled away, I felt dimmer, as if my light had been taken with them. In her song “Orange Moon,” Erykah Badu describes herself as an orange moon that reflects the light of something beyond her. A moon does not generate its own glow; it is illuminated by the sun. This song means something deeper than just orange. It represents how I reflect those around me. The more I shine, the more my connections can feel my light for themselves. I now understand reflection is not erasure. It is not a weakness. It is a connection, and a connection does not mean I disappear.
My mom gave me my name so I would grow up caring for those around me, and, as expected, I do. The meaning of my name comes from a language I do not understand, and it has created a distance between me and what it represents.
On Saturdays, I woke up to the smell of jollof rice my mom was cooking, with Yoruba gospel playing softly through the house. She taught me a few songs, but I never understood their meaning. After school, my mom would call my grandmother, and I’d sit in the car with my brother, listening to them converse in Yoruba, unable to follow their words. I loved my family gatherings; we would dress in traditional Nigerian clothing, but to me, it was just dressing up, wearing a culture I couldn’t fully claim. I danced to music I didn’t understand, showing up to represent a background that wasn’t fully mine while hiding the parts of myself that were. Even surrounded by the colors of my heritage, I sometimes felt like a different shade, one the world couldn’t name. This distance from my culture mirrored the distance I sometimes felt from myself, carrying a name and expectations I wanted to honor, but never fully understood.
I am learning to live without apology, even when the world recoils from my glow. To hold my fire without burning those I love. To let my light reach others without shrinking it for comfort. I am learning to be orange in a world that prefers beige, to let my warmth, my brightness, my becoming exist, even when it feels lonely. Even as a daughter, a sister, a friend, I am discovering that my glow can touch others without overwhelming them, that my fire can coexist with care, that I can hold my own color and still hold my people too.
Maybe colors are only reflections of light. But I am not only light. I am the flicker of fire at the edges of a long, cold night. I am the warmth of a sun that rises too early for anyone to notice. I am too much, and I am enough.
I am orange.
Works Cited
Blount, Davis. “Tyler the Creator: ‘Like Him.’” Donut Tasting 101 RELOADED, 3 Mar. 2025, classapps.chass.ncsu.edu/com304/?p=2254. Accessed 16 Apr. 2026.
Kelly, Tanya. “Orange | Description, Etymology, & Facts | Britannica.” Orange, http://www.britannica.com/science/orange-color. Accessed 16 Apr. 2026.
Landrum, Joanna. “Erykah Badu – ‘Orange Moon’ Lyrics Meaning.” MelodyInsight, 3 Dec. 2023, melodyinsight.com/erykah-badu-orange-moon-lyricsmeaning/?utm_source=chatgpt.com. Accessed 16 Apr. 2026.
Adefolake Adewusi is a Nigerian American freshman at Kennesaw State University, just beginning her journey as a writer, exploring how to express her thoughts and experiences through reflective, lyrical storytelling. Adefolake’s work focuses on identity, culture, and emotional depth, and she is particularly interested in understanding how personal growth and relationships shape who we become.