Starved for love
Once again, I am intertwined with a body my soul can’t get close to
On the first shot of tequila, he was asking for my name.
On the second, we were sucking each other’s mouths dry.
What’s his name? Honestly, no idea.
Having the modern 20-something diva genotype, flirting is the powerhouse of my cells. It charges me up more than coffee ever could. It’s instinct. I don’t even think about it. A sly smile, an “oh hey, my friend thinks you’re cute” (while obviously pointing at myself), or the blunt laziness of “I like your face” is enough to send sparks through my veins. The rush is immediate, intoxicating. Attention is my drug and I know how to score. Getting someone to look at me like I’m the best thing in the room feels like winning. Getting their number is like ripping into the flesh of a naïve bunny with sharpened teeth. I am the tiger, smug, drenched in victory, dripping in my own smug-ass ego.
And like any hunter, I rely on my weapon. Flirting is the blade I keep strapped to my thigh: quick, sharp, always ready. A look, a laugh, a line—it doesn’t take much to draw blood. I know the game. I know the chase. I know how to take down a target with nothing but a flick of my tongue and the tilt of my head. But the problem with the hunt is this: catching doesn’t mean keeping. You can slash, bite, devour, and still end up with nothing but bones scattered at your feet.
One kiss here, another lazy “when can I see you” there, and the whole thing becomes noise. Empty repetitions, rehearsed lines, the same performance played with different actors. It leaves me immune to the illusion of romance. All it ever amounts to is other people’s energy being tossed like offerings onto the altar of my validation. They give, I take, and for a while it feels like power. But when the room is quiet again, when the numbers in my phone blur into faceless ghosts, I realize power isn’t filling me up. It’s starving me.
Because the truth is, I’m hungry. And the more I flirt, the more it’s like walking into a sushi bar when all I want is a burger. Sushi is neat, cute, clean—bite-sized distractions on porcelain plates. But sushi never leaves you full. Sushi disappears the moment it hits your tongue. What I want is the burger. I want something greasy, heavy, impossible to eat without making a mess. I want the kind of love that drips down your chin, stains your clothes, and leaves you choking on every bite. Something so rich, so overwhelming, it both destroys me and saves me.
And maybe that’s the part I’ve been avoiding. Because to love like that, to eat like that, I can’t just be the hunter. I’d have to surrender. I’d have to offer myself up as the prey. I’d have to trust someone enough to walk into their jaws and believe they won’t tear me apart. And isn’t that the scariest part of all? Flirting asks for nothing but scraps of me—a smirk, a joke, a number on a napkin. But love demands the whole feast. Love demands I place my heart on the plate and say, take it.
Sometimes I think what I really want isn’t to devour, but to be devoured. To be bitten into like the burger I can’t stop craving—messy, dripping, impossible to put down. Bursting in every bite. It breaks apart if you dare to put it down. I want to collapse into someone’s hunger and know that when they chew me alive, they’ll do it with tenderness. I want to stop clawing, stop striking, stop playing the tiger. I want to soften into the trembling bunny and know I’ll be held instead of torn apart.
And yet, here I am, in my twenties, cheating on love. We all are. We cheat on it with attention, with swipes, with people we don’t care about and can’t even name. Dating apps have turned desire into a vending machine: swipe, tap, snack. Nobody’s really eating; we’re just grazing. Ghosting has become our love language—slipping out the back door of people’s lives without even closing it behind us. We don’t even want people half the time. We just want proof we could have them if we wanted.
This is the paradox of being young: we’re told to play the field, to experiment, to keep things casual because love will come later. But what if I don’t want later? What if I’m already starving? What if I want to build a home inside someone instead of collecting trophies and lipstick-stained glasses?
I want love. Not the half-ass “u up?” kind. Not the tequila-soaked kind that fades by sunrise. I want the kind that demands everything from me and terrifies me because of it. The kind that strips me of my ego and makes me human again. The kind that ruins me and saves me in the same breath.
I want love so much it’s bursting at the seams. And until it finds me, I’ll keep cheating on it—with tequila, with strangers, with flirtations that taste sweet for a second and vanish like smoke. Every time, it will feel like winning. And every time, it will feel like losing.
But well, a little flirting doesn’t hurt, does it?