Critique of Dead Love Song and The Clouds Between Us

Story Structure

Choose one story from below to critique
Copy and paste the story into a word document
Underneath the story, write a formal critique of approximately
Your critique should be written in full sentences and make specific reference to the story (using direct quotations)
Your critique may be written in the first person

Structure of your Critique:
In the introduction, summarize the story in two to three sentences
Identify what you believe to be the most effective story element and provide specific examples (quotations)
Discuss what makes it effective
Identify an aspect of the story that you believe is missing and/or takes away from the overall impact of the story and provide specific examples (quotations)
Offer concrete suggestions for improvement
Elements to consider for your critique:
Story structure (beginning, middle and end)
Conflict (use of opposing forces)
Resolution (how the conflict is solved or not solved)
Language and Tone in presenting ideas and themes
Action (showing) 
Exposition (telling)
Character(s)’ motivations
Characterization (Who a character is? What a character wants? How a character tries to get what he/she wants?)
Use of Irony 
Use of Symbols
Description (time, place, setting, characters, etc)

Story 1:
Dead love song
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“It is so astonishing!”, said the girl with blue nails looking at the blackboard where she saw a few x’s were about to transform into something she didn’t know.” That was the message that hooked me to her for more than 20 years. I still remember getting it during the class, and then I thought that the whole room with people that had been lit with the light from the midday sun, became even brighter. I looked back, and saw that she was smiling sitting at the farthest desk. I was 14. I touched her hand, and it was a bit rough from food allergy and cool, and felt as refreshing as drinking a soft drink in heat.
Her hand is in my hand. It is the beginning of something we are thinking about all the time. We share ideas, music, food, and we’re rambling around the town with the intention to figure out everything or at least anything. Writing songs and poetry are more like revisiting the past time trying to understand how the world worked before we were born.
“There’s nothing we can hope for. We’re not going to see anything,” she said as we were sitting on the floor in the school gym. I looked at her but didn’t say anything.
“Let’s skip the class,” I said. “Now.”
I’m not holding her hand anymore. We moved to different cities. All I have to do is stalking her on the internet and compare each human being I meet to her. None of whom I met could be so sarcastic, caustic, mean, and kind to me as her. I know that she was annoyed by me, and I wanted to turn into something that would please her, I definitely would have if only I knew what kind of person, she wants to see beside her.
Finally, I was so happy that I would see her, 16 years later. I was trying to prepare myself for the meeting, and then she texted me that she was going to bring her friend. We couldn’t talk as we would have talked if there were just two of us. She was polite, but not that friendly. And then, in that bar full of strangers drinking, arguing, cheering, I realized that she became just one of them to me. I still think that I knew her well, but I lost her hand forever.   
 
Story 2:
The Clouds Between Us
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She kneeled in front of the stone before her, and placed a set of red roses beneath it. Her eyes gazed at the carved markings on that stone I had seen far too many times and touched each symbol, one by one. When she arrived, I dared not look at the stone, or at her.
I looked up into the darkened sky and watched as the rain poured on top of me. There was light that slipped between the cracks of the clouds. Those were the Sun’s tears, crying and begging to see the Earth’s face once more, but was split apart by the clouds.
I glanced at her. The droplets of rain dripped from her black umbrella and soaked the Earth’s soil. My feet had gotten cold. I looked down, staring as I slowly deepened into the mud. The Earth pulled me, and I only kept coming closer to Satan’s realm. I did not fear as I heard her cries; Earth’s. She cried to me, demanding that I showed her where her loved one had gone.