Milk Teal Tahitian Gardenia

I stumbled upon a ceramic flower at a shop that I’m pretty sure only exists to trick people into thinking they’re cultured. It’s a medium-sized gardenia, teal, with the kind of boldness that only comes from something pretending to be nature. The flower has a keyhole on the back, which means it's meant to be wall mounted. The shop called it wall art decor, but I’m convinced it’s a scam to convince us that things like this belong inside homes, rather than next to the checkout counter of a suburban gift shop. I thought about it for a while before purchasing it, trying to figure out where it would fit. Maybe the kitchen, where nothing has ever been real anyway? Or in the nursery—because surely a teal gardenia would complement the pastel-themed disaster that is most modern-day nursery art. In the end, I hung it above the couch, and now it’s a strange, slightly sarcastic reminder of how much we’re willing to pay for something that looks like a flower but is more like a reminder that we’ve failed at cultivating taste. It doesn’t quite belong anywhere, but that’s okay. As wall art decor, it’s found its place in the world—just not the one it thought it would.