--- title: "Meaning & Key Takeaway of: Instructions for a Broken Heart I will…" description: "\"“Instructions for a Broken Heart I will find a bare patch of earth, somewhere where the ruins have fallen away, somewhere where I can fit both hands, a..." image: "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5e6/kim-culbertson-39658_bare-skin_instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-f_1763280.jpg" --- # Instructions for a Broken Heart I will find a bare patch… ![“Instructions for a Broken Heart I will find a bare patch of earth, somewhere where the ruins have fallen away, somewhere where I can fit both hands, and I will dig a hole. And into that hole, I will scream you, I will dump all the shadow places of my heart—the times you didn’t call when you said…” quote by Kim Culbertson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5e6/kim-culbertson-39658_bare-skin_instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-f_1763280.jpg) [Download](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5e6/kim-culbertson-39658_bare-skin_instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-f_1763280.jpg) [Open image](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5e6/kim-culbertson-39658_bare-skin_instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-f_1763280.jpg) > ““Instructions for a Broken Heart I will find a bare patch of earth, somewhere where the ruins have fallen away, somewhere where I can fit both hands, and I will dig a hole. And into that hole, I will scream you, I will dump all the shadow places of my heart—the times you didn’t call when you said you’d call, the way you only half listened to my poems, your eyes on people coming through the swinging door of the café—not on me—your ears, not really turned toward me. For all those times I started to tell you about the fight with my dad or when my grandma died, and you said something about your car, something about the math test you flunked, as an answer. I will scream into that hole the silence of dark nights after you’d kissed me, how when I asked if something was wrong—and something was obviously so very wrong—how you said “nothing,” how you didn’t tell me until I had to see it in the dim light of a costume barn—so much wrong. I will scream all of it. Then I will fill it in with dark earth, leave it here in Italy, so there will be an ocean between the hole and me. Because then I can bring home a heart full of the light patches. A heart that sees the sunset you saw that night outside of Taco Bell, the way you pointed out that it made the trees seem on fire, a heart that holds the time your little brother fell on his bike at the fairgrounds and you had pockets full of bright colored Band-Aids and you kissed the bare skin of his knees. I will take that home with me. In my heart. I will take home your final Hamlet monologue on the dark stage when you cried closing night and it wasn’t really acting, you cried because you felt the words in you and on that bare stage you felt the way I feel every day of my life, every second, the way the words, the light and dark, the spotlight in your face, made you Hamlet for that brief hiccup of a moment, made you a poet, an artist at your core. I get to take Italy home with me, the Italy that showed me you and the Italy that showed me—me—the Italy that wrote me my very own instructions for a broken heart. And I get to leave the other heart in a hole. We are over. I know this. But we are not blank. We were a beautiful building made of stone, crumbled now and covered in vines. But not blank. Not forgotten. We are a history. We are beauty out of ruins.”” [Kim Culbertson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/kim-culbertson/) ## About This Quote This interpretation was drafted with AI assistance. It is one reading of the quote, not the author's own explanation. The speaker describes digging a symbolic hole to bury painful memories and then filling it with earth, turning sorrow into a treasured, luminous heart. **In simple terms:** Bury pain, keep the light Key Takeaway Transform grief into cherished memories Themes healing memory transformation Mood reflective melancholic Type poetic introspective When to use this quote - personal loss - family illness - relationship conflict - artistic expression Key Concepts symbolic burial emotional alchemy Questions to Reflect On - How do you turn hurt into something beautiful? - What rituals help you release pain? 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Or maybe he…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/anonymous/maybe-his-grandma-died-or-maybe-he-lost-my-number-or-is-out-of-town/) [Anonymous](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/anonymous/) > [Domestic violence is what I do to my toilet after eating Taco Bell.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/nikhil-saluja/domestic-violence-is-what-i-do-to-my-toilet-after-eating-taco-bell/) [Nikhil Saluja](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/nikhil-saluja/) > [That awkward moment when your in the drive-through and you ask for a Big Mac,then you realize your at Taco Bell.](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/scar-simmons/that-awkward-moment-when-your-in-the-drive-through-and-you-ask-for-a/) Scar Simmons > [Believe it or not, Mexican cooking, for those of you who have not gone farther south than Taco Bell, uses a lot of vegetables.…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/sandra-cisneros/believe-it-or-not-mexican-cooking-for-those-of-you-who-have-not-gone/) [Sandra Cisneros](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/sandra-cisneros/) ## More by Kim Culbertson > [“What’s painful is that what you had together, all your inside jokes and favorite restaurants and that movie you both loved but everyone else…](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kim-culbertson/what-s-painful-is-that-what-you-had-together-all-your-inside-jokes/) [Kim Culbertson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/kim-culbertson/) > [“I don’t think anyone who tries something they love is a failure. 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For all those times I started to tell you about the fight with my dad or when my grandma died, and you said something about your car, something about the math test you flunked, as an answer. I will scream into that hole the silence of dark nights after you’d kissed me, how when I asked if something was wrong—and something was obviously so very wrong—how you said “nothing,” how you didn’t tell me until I had to see it in the dim light of a costume barn—so much wrong. I will scream all of it. Then I will fill it in with dark earth, leave it here in Italy, so there will be an ocean between the hole and me. Because then I can bring home a heart full of the light patches. A heart that sees the sunset you saw that night outside of Taco Bell, the way you pointed out that it made the trees seem on fire, a heart that holds the time your little brother fell on his bike at the fairgrounds and you had pockets full of bright colored Band-Aids and you kissed the bare skin of his knees. I will take that home with me. In my heart. I will take home your final Hamlet monologue on the dark stage when you cried closing night and it wasn’t really acting, you cried because you felt the words in you and on that bare stage you felt the way I feel every day of my life, every second, the way the words, the light and dark, the spotlight in your face, made you Hamlet for that brief hiccup of a moment, made you a poet, an artist at your core. I get to take Italy home with me, the Italy that showed me you and the Italy that showed me—me—the Italy that wrote me my very own instructions for a broken heart. And I get to leave the other heart in a hole. We are over. I know this. But we are not blank. We were a beautiful building made of stone, crumbled now and covered in vines. But not blank. Not forgotten. We are a history. We are beauty out of ruins.”", "creator": { "@type": "Person", "name": "Kim Culbertson" }, "isPartOf": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website" }, "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kim-culbertson/instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-find-a-bare-patch-of-earth/", "about": { "@type": "Thing", "name": "Bare skin" }, "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kim-culbertson/instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-find-a-bare-patch-of-earth/#quotation", "image": { "@type": "ImageObject", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5e6/kim-culbertson-39658_bare-skin_instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-f_1763280.jpg", "contentUrl": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5e6/kim-culbertson-39658_bare-skin_instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-f_1763280.jpg", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/i/5e6/kim-culbertson-39658_bare-skin_instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-f_1763280.jpg", "width": 1080, "height": 1080, "caption": "“Instructions for a Broken Heart I will find a bare patch of earth, somewhere where the ruins have fallen…” — Kim Culbertson", "creditText": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "creator": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } } }, { "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [ { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Home", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Quotes", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 3, "name": "Kim Culbertson", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/author/kim-culbertson/" }, { "@type": "ListItem", "position": 4, "name": "“Instructions for a Broken Heart I...", "item": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kim-culbertson/instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-find-a-bare-patch-of-earth/" } ], "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/kim-culbertson/instructions-for-a-broken-heart-i-will-find-a-bare-patch-of-earth/#breadcrumb" }, { "@type": "WebSite", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#website", "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/", "publisher": { "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization" } }, { "@type": "Organization", "@id": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/#organization", "name": "SMS4Smile Quotes", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/", "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://sms4smile.com/quotes/wp-content/themes/sq/assets/icons/icon-512.png", "width": 512, "height": 512 } } ] } ```