A tiny LED, the kind of status light on almost any gadget, becomes the starting point for a moment of unease. The speaker begins almost like a commentator on technology, calling the light "baleful" whatever its color and describing it as a promise of a "firefly future" where we get light without heat. But the comparison to foxfire, the glowing fungus on rotting wood, pulls the mood somewhere older and eerier. Something sleek and modern starts to look like something growing in a dark forest.
Then the poem turns personal. The speaker reaches toward the light and is startled by the sight of their own finger, lit up and unfamiliar. It looks like an alien's, from a planet with a strange sun and too many moons. The feeling is a mix of wonder and mild creepiness: the ordinary world, seen in odd light, briefly becomes foreign, even the speaker's own body.