Amusingly enough, there's actually an in-universe reason Anakin Skywalker was so bad at flirting in the Star Wars prequel trilogy. Anakin Skywalker may be the Chosen One, but his destiny was evidently never that of a silver-tongued smooth-talker. After all, it has hard to forget his weird, pseudo-romantic pivot from a complaint about sand to an attempt to chat up Padmé. Oddly enough, she seems to have found Anakin's artless attempt at chatting her up to be endearing - perhaps attracted to his honesty, when she was no doubt familiar with far more competent potential suitors whose interests she did not return.
From an out-of-universe perspective, there's a simple reason Anakin was so bad at flirting. It's because his dialogue was written by George Lucas, and - while Lucas is a great visionary with a tremendous imagination - dialogue was perhaps not an area the man excelled in. That wasn't so much of a problem during the production of the original trilogy, because Lucas was working with people like Harrison Ford and Carrie Fisher, who would tell him in no uncertain terms what they thought of the lines he wanted them to say. But Lucas had become a legend by the time he got around to making the prequel trilogy, and nobody dared challenge his vision. As a result, Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones features some particularly bad lines in which Lucas attempted to write romance, and frankly failed.
But there is also an in-universe reason Anakin Skywalker was so bad at flirting - and it's because he was a Jedi. Anakin was inducted into the Jedi Order when he was nine years old, and then spent his teenage years serving as Obi-Wan Kenobi's Padawan. Most people learn to flirt through observation and experience; through watching others flirt, through being on the receiving end of flirtatious comments and actions, and through trying them out for themselves. But Anakin grew up in a community where any attachment was discouraged, and where romance was not practiced. Worse still, because he had been brought into the Jedi rather than growing up in it, he was an immediate outsider who lacked any social connection to his peers. Some of the tie-in books have hinted Anakin spent a good portion of his time as a Padawan feeling very lonely indeed. Given Anakin's excited reaction at the prospect of seeing Padmé again in Star Wars: Episode II - Attack of the Clones, it's frankly likely he'd fantasized over her for years in an attempt to fulfill his longing for intimacy.
All this means it's no surprise Anakin struggled to flirt with Padmé. After fantasizing over Padmé for years, he was finally face-to-face with the real woman, and all those emotions he had pretended were not there suddenly came bursting to the surface. Anakin most likely didn't even understand what he was feeling in the first place, because emotional intelligence hardly seems to have been his strong suit, and consequently he would have been even more tongue-tied than any normal teenager spending quality time with their first crush. That perfectly explains his wandering, strained metaphors; he really had no idea what he was doing and what he was saying, and it was only dumb luck - or the will of the Force - that meant he didn't get shot down by Padmé.
Unfortunately, this also explains why Anakin and Padmé's relationship was doomed from the start. Anakin had mistaken infatuation with love, and infatuation is a much more selfish thing. Worse still, the Clone Wars meant the couple spent precious little time together getting to know one another, and their contrasting experiences - Padmé in the Senate, Anakin on the front lines of the Clone Wars - caused them to grow apart. As a result, in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith the two lovers suddenly found themselves on opposite sides - and the greatest tragedy in Star Wars built to a climax.
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