Beneath a Scarlet Sky

by Mark T. Sullivan

You can’t carry the world’s problems on your back. You have to find some happiness in your life, and just do your best with the rest.”

All great things come from love, don’t they?”

“We can do anything we want,” Pino said. “Life is limitless.” “We can chase happiness, live passionately?” “Is that really all you want? To chase happiness, and live passionately?” “Can you imagine any other way to do it?” “No,” he said, kissing Anna and loving her all the more. “I guess I really can’t.”

Pino was in love, and as love does, it had warped his sense of time.

We never know what will happen next, what we will see, and what important person will come into our life, or what important person we will lose. Life is change, constant change, and unless we are lucky enough to find comedy in it, change is nearly always a drama, if not a tragedy. But after everything, and even when the skies turn scarlet and threatening, I still believe that if we are lucky enough to be alive, we must give thanks for the miracle of every moment of every day, no matter how flawed.

“Pino Lella’s prescription for a long, happy life?” I said. He laughed at that, and wagged his finger in the air. “The happy part of a long life, anyway. The song to be sung.”

“Forgive an old man his memories,” Pino said. “Some loves never die.”