LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds

Host: The evening was thick with smoke and music in the corner café of an old city street. Rain drummed faintly against the windows, leaving silver veins down the glass. Inside, lamplight pooled in golden circles over the wooden tables, where faces leaned close in low conversation.
Jack sat there — broad-shouldered, lean, sleeves rolled, a cigarette half-burning between his fingers. His grey eyes were fixed on the steam rising from his cup, as though it carried the truth he’d been chasing all his life.
Across from him, Jeeny’s dark hair clung slightly from the rain, her brown eyes bright and alive, the kind of eyes that could see tenderness even in ruin.

Host: The clock ticked; the air hummed. Somewhere in the background, an old jazz song swayed like a memory. And between them, on the table, lay a small book, its page open to a single line — Henry Fielding’s words:
“LOVE: A word properly applied to our delight in particular kinds of food; sometimes metaphorically spoken of the favorite objects of all our appetites.”

Jeeny: (smiling faintly) “It’s cynical, isn’t it? To call love just another appetite. As if all our deepest affections are nothing but cravings dressed in poetry.”

Jack: (leans back, voice low) “Maybe that’s all it ever is, Jeeny. Appetite in disguise. You can call it romance, devotion, sacrifice — but beneath it, it’s the same instinct that drives a man to eat, to hunt, to own.”

Host: The cigarette smoke curled upward, a slow ghost twisting between them. The rain thickened, its rhythm syncing with the tension in their voices.

Jeeny: “That’s such a bleak way to see it. Are you saying when someone says ‘I love you,’ what they really mean is ‘you feed me’? That it’s nothing but self-interest?”

Jack: “Isn’t it? Look around. People ‘fall in love’ when they’re lonely, when they want to feel seen, when they need someone to complete them. It’s not about giving. It’s about filling a void. Just like food fills hunger.”

Jeeny: (leans forward) “Then what about a mother’s love for her child? There’s no void to fill there. It’s pure — painful even. She gives without expecting anything.”

Jack: “You’re forgetting biology. Even that has an instinctual root — protection of genes, survival of lineage. Evolution wrote that script long before poets gave it a prettier name.”

Host: Jeeny’s fingers tightened around her cup, the porcelain trembling slightly. Her voice, though soft, cut through the noise like a blade wrapped in silk.

Jeeny: “So, by your logic, everything beautiful — every gesture, every sacrifice, every song about love — is just chemical theater? No soul, no meaning?”

Jack: “Not meaningless. Just not divine. It’s the most brilliant mechanism nature ever built. The way we romanticize it, that’s what makes it beautiful — not some cosmic truth.”

Host: A brief silence fell. The rain slowed to a whisper, and the music shifted to a quieter melody — a piano, steady and wistful. Jack’s eyes softened for a moment, but his jaw remained set.

Jeeny: “You know, the funny thing about people like you, Jack, is you talk as if disillusionment is the only form of wisdom. You strip things bare until nothing’s left but bones, then call it truth.”

Jack: (smirks) “Because sometimes, bones are all that’s real. Everything else — the words, the songs, the promises — they rot.”

Jeeny: “Yet people keep writing songs, don’t they? They keep holding hands, even after being hurt. If love were just hunger, wouldn’t we stop once we’re fed?”

Host: Her eyes glimmered in the dim light, like embers refusing to die. The air between them pulsed with something unspoken — part anger, part ache.

Jack: “People don’t stop because hunger always comes back. You eat, you’re full, you starve again. That’s love. A cycle of need.”

Jeeny: “No, that’s addiction. Love isn’t about consuming. It’s about creating. About wanting the other to exist, even when it costs you.”

Jack: “Beautiful words. But look at history. Empires have burned over so-called ‘love.’ Helen’s face, Antony and Cleopatra — obsession, not creation. Appetite for possession disguised as passion.”

Jeeny: “And yet from that same fire, came art, poetry, revolutions. You can’t deny love has built as much as it’s destroyed. The same way a seed must break before it grows.”

Host: Jack’s hand moved to the book, tracing the words with a kind of weariness. His voice softened, but his eyes stayed sharp.

Jack: “You ever wonder why we confuse the two — love and appetite? Maybe because they feel the same. The ache in the stomach, the rush in the veins, the craving for something you can’t have.”

Jeeny: “Yes, they feel the same — but they’re not. Appetite ends with satisfaction; love begins there. It asks for something beyond the body — something that doesn’t fade when you’re full.”

Host: The music swelled briefly — a haunting note stretching like a thread between them. Jack looked away, toward the window, where the streetlights blurred through the rain like memory.

Jack: “Do you really believe love is something higher? Beyond flesh? Beyond need?”

Jeeny: “I believe it’s what makes us human. Animals have appetite. We have the capacity to turn it into devotion, to choose someone not just because we need them — but because we see them.”

Host: For the first time, Jack’s expression faltered — something fragile crossing his face, like a shadow remembering sunlight.

Jack: “What about when it ends? When the one you ‘see’ leaves, or dies, or stops seeing you back? Does that love still exist then?”

Jeeny: “Yes. Especially then. Because that’s when it stops being an exchange. When you still wish them peace, even as you sit here alone. That’s the proof it wasn’t just appetite.”

Host: The words hung in the air, heavy and quiet. Outside, the rain had stopped, leaving the world rinsed and pale under the first hint of dawn.

Jack exhaled, the smoke escaping like a tired ghost.

Jack: “You always make it sound noble. Maybe I just don’t trust what I can’t measure.”

Jeeny: “And maybe that’s why it keeps slipping through your hands.”

Host: A small laugh — half sad, half understanding — broke from her lips. Jack stared at her for a long moment, the kind of look that’s less about seeing and more about surrendering.

Jack: “Maybe Fielding was right — maybe love is appetite. But maybe what makes us human is how we savor it — not just devour it.”

Jeeny: (smiles softly) “And maybe what makes us divine is that we can starve for it, and still call it beautiful.”

Host: The dawn grew brighter. The café lights dimmed, leaving the morning to spill across their faces like a quiet truth.

Jack stubbed out his cigarette, and for once, his hands stopped trembling.

Jeeny lifted her cup, now cold, and whispered, “To love — appetite, or not.”

Jack: “To love — and the hunger it leaves behind.”

Host: And as the sun rose beyond the wet glass, their silhouettes lingered in the soft light — two souls caught between hunger and grace, between need and meaning, their silence speaking the only kind of truth love ever knows:
that it feeds us, even as it leaves us empty — and in that emptiness, we learn to live.