There was a time I was whole,

a little sun cradled in two hands,

round and golden, bursting with life,

my skin kissed with citrus laughter,

my heart a well of pulped light.

 

I was made for joy,

for warm afternoons and slow-dancing rays,

for sticky fingers and juice-slicked chins,

for the kind of laughter that makes the ribs ache,

the kind that lingers like honey on the tongue.

 

But the fire came.

 

Not all at once, not in a single, sweeping blaze –

no, life is crueller than that.

Slow. Ember by ember,

a flame licking at the edges of joy,

peeling back my softness. Layer by layer.

 

Loss. A spark.

Grief. A flicker.

Hands that should have held me, dropping instead –

into the coals, into the dark, into the kind of heat

that does not warm, but scars.

 

I am burnt orange now.

My skin, once bright, is deeper, darker, cracked.

The sweetness inside, caramelised,

thick and bitter-edged,

tart where once pure.

 

They say fire purifies.

They say it makes you stronger.

 

Yet they do not know the taste of something that has

been seared,

the way the flavour changes,

the way even the softest fruit

can harden in the heat.

 

Still, I remain.

 

Not untouched, not unscathed,

but here.

 

And somewhere beneath the singed layers,

somewhere beneath the scorch marks and smoke,

there is still light.

Not the easy, golden glow of before.

But something richer, something earned,

something smouldering.

 

A burnt orange is never the same after the flame –

but oh, how it still holds the sun.