Weekly Writing Prompt [Lonely Contemplation Led]

This sentence starter is melancholy just like last week's writing prompt, that can definitely begin sad, but perhaps encourage a peripeteia? (And use it as an opportunity to teach a literary term!) Peripeteia is an unexpected or sudden turn of events.

About the prompt: it was another phrase I couldn't resist using before tearing the entire page apart for a rosette as part of my book art.