The poem begins in sleep, and the opening is a strange, tender idea: we each believe our dreams are private, but we may be more connected than we think. The footsteps we hear could belong to some other creature, and what feels like a wall might be other people's fingers and skin. Sleep, here, is a shared body rather than a solitary room.
Then the speaker wakes, and the mood shifts. Instead of feeling part of something larger, he feels like "a tourist in my own life," wandering through the house with a camera, hoping something significant will break into the dull hum of appliances. There's a mild, wry loneliness in that, along with a sense of disconnection from ordinary days.
The ending is quietly funny and a little sad. Someday, he says, even his breathing will seem worth noting. It suggests that attention, once awakened, might make everything feel meaningful, or that he is slowly running out of other things to notice.