A woman wakes at dawn in a room she can't bear, caught between two bad choices. A man has told her, "Baby you'd better choose now," and she can't answer. She lies under grey sheets, unable to decide whether to go with him or stay where she is.
The imagery makes the dawn feel anything but fresh. It is a "moldy" dawn, in the colors of "knives and concrete," and even the words around her seem stale and full of dust. Against this, she longs for an "orangejuice sun," a bright, living kind of weather that could wake her up. The frostbrown apples and the icebird beating at the window suggest decay, cold, and something wild trying to get out. The last lines turn that struggle inward: her need for "what is green and warm" bruises the glass "inside my bones." The mood is stuck, aching, and quietly desperate, a longing for change she can't yet act on.