Designing a Visual Metaphor

So for this exercise, I got to make a Visual Metaphor for an abstract idea.

Before I explain what it is, I want to ensure that people understand. So I present to you.

And for the reveal, I picked red as the abstract idea. I didn't want to keep making dark themes, so I tried to be weird. What is red? How would you describe red? An apple? Anger?  I kept racking my brain on this and listed a bunch of red objects. Ended up in the "scientific" realm and thought AH light wave. 620-750 nanometers. Using 750 for the height of the image. I saw the colors go from yellow to red to black. I use orange and black for the focus, "a zoomed-in range". (just so we don't get confused with the rainbow, { now that I think of it, that could be an interesting image as well}) Using the transparent pattern to hint that something is missing here. With the apple lacking the color to bring it all together. 

I'm just sitting here and thinking I accidentally made a flag.

I may return to this, as I think I need more time to explore further. As I was writing this, I was like, what if I did this instead? For examples

A rainbow missing the color red (has a transparent pattern to replace it)

Show the full color spectrum (same thing as the last idea)

Just the wave of red?

A bunch of red objects, but disable the red channel?

Lemme know if y'all got any ideas.