ABOMINATION

Carnations are the flowers people buy you when they don’t really care about you. 

Jesse had heard this all her life, mostly from her Boomer mother who loved to impart outdated phrases of wisdom on her still single thirty-three-year-old daughter. Not just single, her mother sometimes worried, but not even interested in dating. You’ll never meet anyone if you don’t date. Once, Jesse let her mother scroll through Tinder, and that had shut her up for a few weeks. 

But the carnation-blasting phrase cropped up in TV and movies, too. The female character who, with a single bouquet, realizes her life is not what she thought. Her efforts, underappreciated.  The love she believed she had, not legitimate. Nowadays, modern female characters received more than roses from a romantic interest. Peonies, hydrangeas, sunflowers, even daisies. 

But still, for whatever reason, carnations equaled disrespect. Disinterest. Disdain. 

Jesse stared at the carnations in the grocery store. Red, orange, pink, white, yellow. The Mariano’s was overflowing with carnations. They were perfect. No brown or curling edges. Just starting to open, but not yet past their prime bloom. They would last for at least a week and a half. Maybe even two. 

Jesse had been buying carnations for the past few months without much thought. They were the cheapest flowers, and it was the dead of winter in Chicago, and she needed some life in her stale apartment, something colorful to chip away at February’s agonizing gray. 

She had a bamboo plant in the kitchen and a money plant in the living room, though neither had brought her luck or wealth, their green leaves punctured by little cat teeth. 

Jesse just wanted some flowers. Why couldn’t she grab the bundle of carnations? Why was she hearing her mother’s voice in her head, warning her about the symbolism of such a basic, simple act? 

If buying herself flowers was a feminist flex, why wasn’t Jesse buying herself the expensive bouquets? Why buy herself flowers with such negative connotations? Was Jesse subconsciously disrespecting herself? Showing herself disdain, subtly hidden among the bright petals? 

Her head hurt. She was getting hot in the store in her winter getup, the mask on her face bouncing back hot breath that clung to her upper lip as sweat. Why did everything feel so goddamn hard? 

She stared at the flowers. Abomination carnations. Ugly flowers. Unwanted flowers. But still, colorful and fresh. Still, no matter what anyone said, a flower.