Candy dish

Sweet insincerities I'm dying to believe

Disco Diaries is a free publication of personal essays and vignettes. If you enjoy it, consider supporting it financially. You can send a few dollars straight to my Venmo (@katyabaro). No wiggle room in the budget? No problem. Sharing this newsletter with friends who might enjoy it shows immense support too.

---

Candy dishes are most often situated in the glummest of settings — cubicles, corner garages, the principal’s office. Serving the same effect as fake flowers in a windowless room, candy dishes are meant to add a touch of hospitality in dreary situations.

But alas, they are a sad gesture. So often the chocolates are dry and chalky. The hard candies are gummy and soft.

And yet, we’re compelled to unwrap them in these cold circumstances. The auto mechanic explains the high cost of repairs, and a three-year-old Jolly Rancher pokes through the dread with the sharp taste of artificial green apple.

The candy dish does exist beyond the gloom. If not occupying the edge of a receptionist’s desk, then a dish might find a brighter future in a grandmother’s foyer. The matriarchs keep them well stocked, because treats are important to them and their guests. These candy dishes live in a cozy narrative, full of chitchat and knee pats. Grandmothers are the demographic working hardest to give the item positive associations.

Candy is a comfort. The candy bowl setting exposes just how desperate we are for that comfort. Even the oldest 100 Grand might be consumed just to feel better at the BMV.

Then there are the jarring candy dishes — the ones that take you by surprise. Candy in the funeral home, candy at the dentist’s checkout window. Imagine being scorned for your sugary eating habits, stepping up to schedule fillings for your cavities, and looking a bowl of old strawberry bonbons straight in the eye.

My hyperactive brain sees a metaphor in the contradiction of this moment. The old dentist candy dish is like an insincerity that I’m dying to believe. They think they can give me a strawberry bonbon and I’ll forget all about the painful hour I just spent in their chair. Poetically speaking:

Friendship with you
Is like
Old candy at the dentist.

I don’t want it.
I shouldn’t have it.
But I’m sucking on it anyway.

---

---

Comforting Voids out May 14

Speaking of poetry, my book of haiku, Comforting Voids, is coming out tomorrow, May 14! Today is the last day to pre-order and get two free 4x5 prints along with your copy. I’m so excited this is happening! Thanks to everyone who has pre-ordered already. I can’t wait to share this with you.

Thank you for reading! Have any feedback for me? I’d love to hear it — so much that I created this form just for that purpose.