There is a kind of love that kills what it touches.

You see something beautiful—a person, a relationship, a way of being—and your first instinct is to hold it. To bring it closer. To make it yours. But the act of taking changes the thing. What made it alive in the first place was its context, its freedom, the conditions it grew in. Remove those, and you’re holding something that’s already dying.

Possession disguises itself as devotion. But real love doesn’t pluck—it learns what soil the thing needs, and kneels beside it.

Concept & Meaning

Most people don’t just admire a flower from a distance. They want to bring it into their world—pluck it, arrange it, fit it into a space that makes sense to them. The intention feels like love. But the flower was alive because of where it was, not because of who was looking at it.

This piece sits in the tension between those two impulses. Appreciation says: I see you, and I want to understand what makes you thrive. Possession says: I see you, and I want you to be mine. One creates space. The other collapses it.

The real question isn’t whether you love something. It’s whether your love requires it to change.

Design Execution

Every design choice reinforces the distance between admiration and control:

The Dead Rose — A plucked flower is beautiful for a moment, but it dies when taken from its environment. It represents what happens when something is admired but not truly understood.

Serif Title — Evokes elegance and traditional romance, playing into the gap between idealized love and real love.

Handwritten Quote — Adds intimacy. It feels personal, like a journal entry or a fleeting thought, contrasting the formality of the title.

Editorial Layout — The structured body text resembles a magazine spread, reinforcing the idea that love and relationships are often overanalyzed and romanticized rather than truly understood.

Muted Textures & Subtle Grain — Adds tactility and warmth, preventing the piece from feeling sterile. Love, at its core, is imperfect and textured.

Trenton Jackson

Trenton Jackson builds and writes at the intersection of human systems, business architecture, and design.