After installing meld via pip, I can't run it

I've installed meld as a non-root user via pip install meld (on a relatively old distribution - SLES 15). After installation, I see a file named /home/joeuser/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/meld/meld.py ; but no meld executable on my path. And if I try to run that, I get:

$ python3.6 /home/ctuser/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/meld/meld.py
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/ctuser/.local/lib/python3.6/site-packages/meld/meld.py", line 7, in 
    from . import utils
ImportError: cannot import name 'utils'

what am I doing wrong?