Flowers are a risky business. A timeless symbol of vibrancy in a dying world gripped by corruption and rampant mediocrity.

An incorruptible tool of sorrow; an olive branch of repair; or simply a token of appreciation – a burst of colour enters your ecosystem like a burning meteor, and fades away just as quick. Really they are just fun-sized bundles analogous of the cycles that permeate our lives.

Let’s face it – in the 21st century relationships live and die with basically the same intensity. For example, have you ever attempted to use Tinder when your face and or body resemble a week-old wilted bouquet from Coles? You are discounted well beyond 90% and simply dead on arrival… but I digress.

Gifting flowers requires a focus far more broad than a vertically-filmed sunset. Yes, you may have captured the sunset within the frame, but really you missed the murder, for you see flowers are far more danger fraught than you ever considered.

A prickly shock wave emerges upon delivery of the well-meaning bounty, stirring up a strange sensation in bystanders not dissimilar to watching deeply uncomfortable episodes of Seinfeld. What’s the deal with those feelings anyway?

The most straight-forward questions cascade into a watering can of misery soon to shower those most innocent.

Who sent them? Why? The pungent smell of a secret admirer? If the intended recipient isn’t there, do you tell them? How much do you tell them? What if they go home and fail to mention it to a forlorn lover – is it the end of all days? Or if you mention a delivery at all, have you in fact ruined it?

Those, which are really the most well intentioned of things you can embarrassingly bestow on another person, have suddenly left bystanders with an impossible set of ethical dilemmas in their pollen-laden wake. No matter where you turn, the only seeds being sowed are toxic.

For those of us walking around with a perpetual mouthful of foot, our lives are already rooted in risk, and at the stem of it, communication between humans is far more nuanced than a simple gesture.

In a society intent on swiping left on rampant consumerism, waste, and things with negative environmental impacts, flowers are curiously given a free pass in a manner similar to vegans who blow the eco-trumpet while wearing leather and products derived from child labour. But again, I digress.

Separating us from our prehistoric ape ancestors is the germinating intelligence to throw out tokenistic ideas like they’re the first pancake of the batch. Like any message, you simply don’t know how it will be read on the other side.

And scarily, most of them come with a note.