A person sits in bed at night, watching a pair of red glowing eyes that always appear in the same spot. Tonight, though, something has changed: the eyes are closer, and the speaker waits tensely for any movement.
The poem is mostly about fear and how someone copes with it. The speaker admits to hiding under the blanket on earlier nights, whining and waiting. Now the shaking is worse, and the line "I'm shaking and breaking" suggests real panic. Yet the speaker also starts to imagine two options for tomorrow: fighting back or greeting the intruder politely with "Hello Sir." That odd, almost joking line hints at nervous humor, or a wish to make peace with the thing that frightens them.
The last stanza adds a strange routine. The eyes will be gone in twenty minutes, and nobody else sees them. The mood is tense and lonely, with a quiet sense that the speaker must carry on without help.