Day 2 Winner of Quarto’s 2024 Thunderdome Flash Fiction Contest. View the prompt here.

Illustration by Jacqueline Subkhanberdina

My ovary is not at all as I imagined it—it is tiny and squishy and white, like a miniature deviled egg. I am surprised when looking into the small jar the surgeon hands me. I thought it would be pink.
The glass in my hand is firm and cold. I shake it, and the ovary dances, the small bit of severed fallopian tube still attached to its body swaying in the preservative fluid like the ribbon on a little girl’s dress. I stop shaking the jar. The ovary stops dancing.
“Hello.” I say to the ovary.
The ovary says nothing.
“You were just inside me.” I say to the ovary.
The ovary says nothing.
I place the jar down on the tray in front of me, next to my half-eaten red jello cup. I turn my head to the side, and consider the ovary from a new angle.
“You caused me lots of issues. For years and years. Anything to say for yourself about that?”
Still, the ovary says nothing.
I turn my focus back to the small jar of jello, bringing the neon stuff to my mouth in great, heaping spoonfuls. I suddenly wonder if I can trick the ovary into speaking, into answering my questions. I turn quickly towards it, open my mouth, bare red-stained teeth.
“ARGH!”
The ovary says nothing.
I return to my jello.
The next time the doctor looks in, I let him take the ovary away. When he goes to pick it up, it dances in the liquid once more. While it twirls and flips, I feel we finally recognize each other. The ovary looks at me. I look at the ovary. It stops moving, sinks back to the bottom of its jar, fallopian tube trailing behind it like a child’s hand waving goodbye.