Irene's poem takes the familiar nursery rhyme "Star Light, Star Bright" and turns it into a plea from someone who can't sleep. The speaker sits alone in their room at night, afraid of monsters, shadows and the dark. At first this sounds like a child's fear, and the simple rhymes help give it that feel.
But the poem slowly shifts. The speaker says they were "robbed" from a young age, and the real source of the fear seems to be a memory of a "significant leer," a look from a man that made them feel unsafe. The poem doesn't spell out what happened, so the reader is left to sense it. Judging by the text, the darkness is frightening because it brings that memory back.
The mood is anxious, lonely and heavy. Repeating the opening refrain, but ending with "I'm afraid to sleep tonight," makes the wish feel less like hope and more like an admission of fear.