Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
Lines 51-56
I peeled my orange
That was so bright against
The gray of December
That, from some distance,
Someone might have thought
I was making a fire in my hands.
- While his girl unwraps her chocolate, the speaker peels the remaining orange. (He had two, but he used one to barter for the chocolate.)
- The description of the orange's intense, "bright" color in contrast to the wintry "gray" of the landscape brings all the focus onto the orange in the speaker's hands.'
- The color of the orange is so bright that someone, from a distance, might mistake the orange for fire in the speaker's hands.
- Pretty intense, right?
- That word "bright" echoes the description of the girl's "bright" face from way back in line 14.
- The fact that Soto uses the same word to describe the girl's face and the orange is probably significant. The repetition creates a connection between the girl and the orange.
- Poets are usually pretty good at coming up with ways to describe stuff. It's kind of their job. If they start repeating descriptive words in a relatively short poem like this one, your Spidey-sense should start tingling.
- Feel it?
- So, what's the connection between the girl and the orange?
- Try this on for size: the visual intensity of the bright orange against the dull gray background represents the feeling the speaker has when he's with the girl.
- When he's alone, the world is cold and gray. When she's around, everything is bright and toasty, like warming your hands over a roaring fire on a cold afternoon.
- Hot stuff, indeed.