Set in a public library just before closing, the poem takes a list-like look at who ends up there and why. The speaker notices small, worn details: coughing, threadbare gloves, a bright interior against a purple evening sky. People wait in line for computers, pretend to browse, and hope to check email before 8pm. The polite sign about "respecting others" quietly hints at less polite behavior, and the speaker's dry humor shows in lines like that.
Underneath the wry observation is a sharper worry. After 8, the speaker says, there's nowhere free to go, no place where it's your public right even to cough. The library is one of the last spaces that asks nothing of you. The ending darkens when the speaker notices a man with a huge backpack "full of knives / or something," then admits to knowing this room "too well already." The mood is tender, tired, and a little uneasy: sympathy for people with few options, mixed with the wariness of someone who has seen too much of it.