There’s a word in Hebrew – malkosh – that means “last rain.” It’s a word that can only be applied in retrospect. When it’s raining, you have no way of knowing that the falling drops would be the last ones of the year.

But then time goes by, the clouds clear, and you realize that that rain shower was the last one.

Inspired by “The Unmothered” by Ruth Margalit in The New Yorker.