Word and Voice

Tsa ugh.. another Lafka.

It’s like they’re falling from the sky!

Lafka was our word for the little newspaper stands,
and now this company came and made our word a shiny brand and started replacing all the things they took their name from.

I used to buy newspapers all the time.
When I was a little girl.

The woman in the stand was always the same one. From since you were born. She was the same. Since you were in a stroller.

We stop and look at the Lafkas open doors clad in 20 different bright colored pages screaming headlines at us.

There used to be only two newspapers. Word and Voice.

Voice was democratic.

Grandpa would always send me out with 20 stotinki to buy Word, cigarettes, and gum.

Our apartment used to be theirs and we lived with them.
He would always be sitting in the kitchen, listening to the national radio, smoking out the balcony door, and he would pull some loose change from his pocket and call me over. The order was always the same, but he still made it. And every time on my way out the door, grandma would stop me, “No cigarettes. Just newspaper and gum.”

“Grandma had the last word.
but not soon enough…”

“Unfortunately, Grandpa died of lung cancer.”

*Duma and Glas were the names of the two newspapers.