how do you love?

         I met a man who was only interested in keeping the company of women who always left. Always tethered to some sort of time line, the end always in sight, they leave a day a week a month or so later, inevitably they would leave. I wondered while I watched him what it was that drew him so near to these women. Was it the blueprinted lack of commitment or the passionate fight against fate that forced him to love them so dearly? And love them he did. He loved these women in a way I have never witnessed someone love before. He loved them like these were their last days on earth together.
         A part of me envied his ability to love so truly so deeply so madly, if only for a moment of time. Was it the hurt he was after? He sat there in the summer light sipping hot coffee on a hot June day and everything about him made me question the way I had lived my life thus far. The women he kept company with all held the same virtues, they were frighteningly similar mirrored and distorted images of each other where traits seemed to bleed from one to the next. I wondered which came first, whom had inspired the selection of the rest, or if these women without knowing naturally gravitated toward him.
       They were all painfully bright to a fault and remarkably self aware and yet all seemed to be blindsided by his network of touches and glances, late nights and star gazing. They were all inspired and inspiring on a daily moment and he seemed to draw something from that. She was a dancer and the other a thinker, one was a designer and the other a writer, one was a model and the other a photographer. I am sure there are more I hadn't had the pleasure of sharing a breakfast table with over the summer.
       For whatever reason I became convinced that he had in one way figured out something that the rest of day after day were completely blind of, or he was cursed to love in the most painful way possible. So I ask you, is it better to love fiercely and fleetingly or to love steadily and constantly?